Chapter I: of Part V of Anna Karénina, where they are attributed to (1)

Lévin.

The marriage took place within a week of the proposal, namely on 23rd September 1862, in the Court church of the Krémlin, the bridegroom being thirty-four and the bride eighteen years of age. When the ceremony was over the couple left Moscow in a _dormeuse_ (sleeping carriage), and drove to Yásnaya Polyána, where Tolstoy's brother Sergéy and Aunt Tatiána were awaiting them.

Fet records the letter in which Tolstoy informed him of his marriage:

FÉTOUSHKA [an endearing diminutive of Fet] UNCLE, or simply
DEAR FRIEND AFANÁSY AFANÁSYEVITCH!--I have been married two weeks
and am happy, and am a new, quite a new man. I want to visit
you, but cannot manage it. When shall I see you? Having come to
myself, I feel that I value you very, very much. We have so many
unforgettable things in common: Nikólenka, and much besides. Do
drive over and make my acquaintance. I kiss Márya Petróvna's hand.
Farewell, dear friend. I embrace you with all my heart.

In another letter belonging to the same period he writes:

I am writing from the country, and while I write, from upstairs
where she is talking to my brother, I hear the voice of my wife,
whom I love more than the whole world. I have lived to the age of
thirty-four without knowing that it was possible to love, and to be
so happy. When I am more tranquil I will write you a long letter.
I should not say 'more tranquil,' for I am now more tranquil
and clear than I have ever been, but I should say, 'when I am
accustomed to it.' At present I have a constant feeling of having
stolen an undeserved, illicit, and not-for-me-intended happiness.
There ... she is coming! I hear her, and it is so good!... And why
do such good people as you, and, most wonderful of all, such a
being as my wife, love me?

It did not much disturb his happiness, when, before Tolstoy had been married a fortnight, an event occurred which might easily have led to very disagreeable consequences. On 3rd October the Minister of the Interior called the attention of the Minister of Education to the harmful nature of the _Yásnaya Polyána_ magazine. This is what he wrote:

A careful perusal of the educational magazine, _Yásnaya Polyána_,
edited by Count Tolstoy, leads to the conviction that that
magazine ... frequently propagates ideas which apart from their
incorrectness are by their very tendency harmful.... I consider
it necessary to direct your Excellency's attention to the general
tendency and spirit of that magazine, which often infringes the
fundamental rules of religion and morality.... I have the honour
to inform you, Sir, of this, in the expectation that you may be
inclined to consider it desirable to direct the special attention
of the Censor to this publication.

Fortunately the decision of the matter did not lie with the Minister of the Interior, but with the Minister of Education, who on receiving this communication had the magazine in question carefully examined, and, on 24th October, replied that he found nothing harmful or contrary to religion in its tendency. It contained extreme opinions on educational matters, no doubt, but these, he said, should be criticised in educational periodicals rather than prohibited by the Censor. 'In general,' added the Minister:

I must say that Count Tolstoy's educational activity deserves full
respect, and the Ministry of Education is bound to assist and
co-operate with him, though it cannot share all his views, some of
which after full consideration he will himself probably reject.

Other things besides the suspicion in which he was held by the Minister of the Interior, tended to discourage Tolstoy. His magazine had few subscribers and attracted but little attention. The year's issue was causing him a loss of something like Rs. 3000 (say about £450)--a larger sum than he could well afford to throw away. So he decided to discontinue it after the twelfth number. The month after his marriage he also closed the school, which was too great a tax on his time and attention.

It has often been said that the obstacles placed in his way by the Government turned him aside from educational work, but in speaking to me about it Tolstoy remarked that really the main factor was his marriage, and his preoccupation with family life.

Both he and his wife were absorbed by their personal happiness, though from time to time small quarrels and misunderstandings arose between them. So impulsive and strenuous a nature as Tolstoy's was sure to have its fluctuations of feeling, but on the whole the ties binding the couple together grew stronger and closer as the months passed into years.

The Countess's parents used to say: 'We could not have wished for greater happiness for our daughter.' The Countess not only loved Tolstoy dearly as a husband, but had the deepest admiration for him as a writer. He on his side often said that he found in family life the completest happiness, and in Sophia Andréyevna not only a loving wife and an excellent mother for his children, but an admirable assistant in his literary work, in which, owing to his careless and unmethodical habits, an intelligent and devoted amanuensis was invaluable. The Countess acquired remarkable skill in deciphering his often extremely illegible handwriting, and was sometimes able to guess in a quite extraordinary way the meaning of his hasty jottings and incomplete sentences.

One drawback to their almost complete happiness lay in the fact that though active and possessed of great physical strength, Tolstoy seldom enjoyed any long periods of uninterrupted good health. In his correspondence we find frequent references to indisposition. In early manhood, he seems to have distended his stomach, and, especially after the hardships he endured during the war of 1854-5, he was subject to digestive troubles for the rest of his days.

Town life did not attract him. He had never felt at ease in what is called high society; nor were his means large enough to enable him to support a wife and family in a good position in town. Still, towards the close of the year of his marriage, he and the Countess spent some weeks in Moscow.

1863

They were however soon back at Yásnaya. In February Fet visited them there, and found them overflowing with life and happiness.

On 15th May, after the Tolstoys and Fet had by some chance just missed meeting at the house of a neighbouring proprietor, Tolstoy wrote to his friend:

We just missed seeing you, and how sorry I am that we did! How
much I want to talk over with you. Not a day passes without our
mentioning you several times. My wife is not at all 'playing with
dolls.' Don't you insult her. She is my serious helpmate, though
now bearing a burden from which she hopes to be free early in
July. What won't she do afterwards? We are _ufanizing_[48] little
by little. I have made an important discovery, which I hasten to
impart to you. Clerks and overseers are only a hindrance to the
management of an estate. Try the experiment of dismissing them all;
then sleep ten hours a day, and be assured that everything will
get along _not worse_. I have made the experiment and am quite
satisfied with its success.

[48] This word, when first invented by Nicholas Tolstoy, meant
ploughing, but it had by now come to mean farming in general.

How, oh how, are we to see one another? If you go to Moscow with
Márya Petróvna and do not come to visit us, it will be dreadful
offensive. (My wife, who was reading this letter, prompted that
sentence.) I wanted to write much, but time lacks. I embrace you
with all my heart; my wife bows profoundly to you, and I to your
wife.

_Business_: When you are in Orél, buy me 20 poods [720 lbs.] of
various kinds of twine, reins, and shaft-traces, if they cost less
than Rs. 2.30 per pood including carriage, and send them me by a
carter. The money shall be paid at once.

Fet soon availed himself of the invitation, and after driving past the low towers which mark the entrance to the birch alley leading to the house, he came upon Tolstoy eagerly directing the dragging of a lake and taking all possible care that the carp should not escape. The Countess, in a white dress, came running down the alley, with a huge bundle of barn-door keys hanging at her waist. After cordially greeting the visitor, she, notwithstanding her 'exceedingly interesting condition,' leapt over the low railing between the alley and the pond. It will however be better to quote Fet's own account of his visit:

'Sónya, tell Nestérka to fetch a sack from the barn, and let us
go back to the house,' said Tolstoy--who had already greeted me
warmly, without losing sight of the carp-capturing operations the
while.

The Countess immediately detached a huge key from her belt and
gave it to a boy, who started at a run to fulfil the order.

'There,' remarked the Count, 'you have an example of our method. We
keep the keys ourselves; and all the estate business is carried on
by boys.'

At the animated dinner table, the carp we had seen captured made
their appearance. We all seemed equally at ease and happy....

That evening was one truly 'filled with hope.' It was a sight to
see with what pride and bright hope Tatiána Alexándrovna, the
kindest of aunts, regarded the young people she so loved; and how,
turning to me, she said frankly, 'You see, with _mon cher Léon_ of
course things could not be otherwise.'

As to the Countess, life to one who in her condition leapt over
fences, could not but be lit up with the brightest of hopes. The
Count himself, who had passed his whole life in an ardent search
for novelties, evidently at this period entered a world till then
unknown, in the mighty future of which he believed with all the
enthusiasm of a young artist. I myself, during that evening, was
carried away by the general tone of careless happiness, and did not
feel the stone of Sisyphus oppressing me.

Soon after this visit, on 28th June 1863, a son, Sergius, was born. During the first eleven years of marriage, the Countess bore her husband eight children, and another five during the next fifteen years: making in all, thirteen children in twenty-six years.

But we must turn back a few months to mention the stories by Tolstoy which appeared during this year.

In the January number of the _Russian Messenger_, Katkóf had published _The Cossacks_, which Tolstoy had kept back to revise, and had only delivered in December.

In the February number of the same magazine appeared _Polikoúshka_, the story of a serf who, having lost some money belonging to his mistress, hangs himself.

These stories are referred to in the following letter from Tolstoy to Fet, undated, but written in 1863:

Both your letters were equally important, significant, and
agreeable to me, dear Afanásy Afanásyevitch. I am living in a
world so remote from literature and its critics, that on receiving
such a letter as yours, my first feeling is one of astonishment.
Whoever was it wrote _The Cossacks_ and _Polikoúshka_? And what's
the use of talking about them? Paper endures anything, and editors
pay for and print anything. But that is merely a first impression;
afterwards one enters into the meaning of what you say, rummages
about in one's head, and finds in some corner of it, among old,
forgotten rubbish, something indefinite, labelled _Art_; and
pondering on what you say, agrees that you are right, and even
finds it pleasant to rummage about in that old rubbish, amid the
smell one once loved. One even feels a desire to write. Of course,
you are right. But then there are few readers of your sort.
_Polikoúshka_ is the chatter of a man who 'wields a pen,' on the
first theme that comes to hand; but _The Cossacks_ has some matter
in it, though poor. I am now writing the story of a pied gelding,
which I expect to print in autumn. [It did not appear till 1888!]
But how can one write now? Invisible efforts--and even visible
ones--are now going on; and, moreover, I am again up to my ears in
farming. So is Sónya. We have no steward; we have assistants for
field-work and building; but she, single-handed, attends to the
office and the cash. I have the bees, the sheep, a new orchard,
and the distillery. It all progresses, little by little, though of
course badly compared with our ideal.

What do you think of the Polish business? [the insurrection of
1863, then breaking out]. It looks bad! Shall we--you and I and
Borísof--not have to take our swords down from their rusty nails?...

The bees, which Tolstoy here places first among his out-door duties, occupied much of his time, and he often spent hours studying the habits of these interesting creatures.

Tourgénef, writing to Fet, commented on _The Cossacks_ as follows:

I read _The Cossacks_ and went into ecstasies over it; so did
Bótkin. Only the personality of Olénin spoils the generally
splendid impression. To contrast civilisation with fresh, primeval
Nature, there was no need again to produce that dull, unhealthy
fellow always preoccupied with himself. Why does Tolstoy not get
rid of that nightmare?

Several months later he wrote:

After you left, I read Tolstoy's _Polikoúshka_ and marvelled at the
strength of his huge talent. But he has used up too much material,
and it is a pity he drowned the son. It makes it too terrible. But
there are pages that are truly wonderful! It made a cold shudder
run down even my back, though you know my back has become thick and
coarse. He is a master, a master!

Tolstoy was now fairly launched on the life he was destined to lead for sixteen years: a quiet, country life, occupied with family joys and cares. These years followed one another with so little change that the story of a decade and a half can almost be compressed into a sentence. Children came in quick succession, two great novels and an _ABC_ Book were produced, a large orchard was planted with apple-trees, the Yásnaya Polyána property was improved, and new estates were purchased east of the Vólga.

During the year 1863 Tolstoy wrote two plays, which have never been published. One, a farcical comedy called _The Nihilist_, was privately performed at home with great success. The second, also a comedy, written on a topic of the day, was called _The Infected Family_. Hoping to have it staged, Tolstoy took it to Moscow early in 1864; but the theatrical season, which in Russia ends at the commencement of Lent, was already too far advanced; and he never subsequently appears to have troubled himself to have it either published or acted.

The Countess Tolstoy's brother, S. A. Behrs (who from 1866 when he was a boy of eleven, till 1878, spent every summer with the Tolstoys) in his book, _Recollections of Count Tolstoy_, gives much interesting information about the life at Yásnaya. He mentions that it was a proverb about the hard fate of penniless noblemen, that prompted Tolstoy to take all possible care to provide for the future of his children; and the passage in the letter quoted above, about the bees, sheep, new orchard and distillery with which he was occupied, shows how this care was applied.

In his _Confession_, Tolstoy says of the years now under review:

Returning from abroad I married. The new conditions of happy family
life completely diverted me from all search for the general meaning
of life. My whole life was centred at that time in my family, wife
and children, and in care to increase our means of livelihood. My
striving after self-perfection and progress, was now again replaced
by the effort simply to secure the best possible conditions for
myself and my family.

So another fifteen years passed.

In spite of the fact that I regarded authorship as of no
importance, I yet, during those fifteen years, continued to write.
I had already tasted the temptation of authorship: the temptation
of immense monetary rewards and applause for my insignificant work;
and I devoted myself to it as a means of improving my material
position, and of stifling in my soul all questions as to the
meaning of my own life, or of life in general.

Again, writing in 1903 of this middle period of his life, Tolstoy says:

Then came a third, an eighteen-year period which may be the least
interesting of all (from my marriage to my spiritual re-birth) and
which from a worldly point of view may be called moral: that is to
say, that during those eighteen years I lived a correct, honest,
family life, not indulging myself in any vices condemned by public
opinion, but with interests wholly limited to selfish cares for
my family, for the increase of our property, the acquisition of
literary success, and all kinds of pleasure.

(In the one place he speaks of 'fifteen years,' and in the other of 'eighteen years'; but that is his way, and chronological exactitude is not the important matter here.)

After the Emancipation, in many parts of Russia the landlords had more or less serious difficulty with the peasants, among whom stories were rife to the effect that the Tsar intended to give them all the land, but had been deceived by the officials into only giving half; and, for a time, riots were not infrequent. There was no serious trouble of this sort on Tolstoy's estate; but his sister (whom I met at Yásnaya in 1902, long after her husband's death and when she, a nun, had been allowed out of her convent to visit her brother, after his very serious illness) told me that on one occasion the peasants refused to make the hay; and to save it from being lost, Tolstoy, his wife, the members of the family, and the masters from eleven neighbouring schools, all set to work with a will, and by their own strenuous exertions saved the crop before the weather changed.

On settling down to married life, Tolstoy formed the plan of writing a great novel, and the epoch he at first intended to deal with was that of the Constitutional conspiracy which came to a head on the accession of Nicholas I to the throne in December 1825. That quite premature military plot was quickly snuffed out. So little were things ripe for it, that many even of the soldiers who shouted for a 'Constitution' (_Konstitútsia_) thought they were demanding allegiance to Nicholas's elder brother Constantine, who having married a Polish lady of the Roman Catholic faith had renounced his right to the throne. While considering the plan of his work, Tolstoy found himself carried back to the scenes amid which his characters had grown up: to the time of the Napoleonic wars and the invasion of Russia by the French in 1812. Here was a splendid background for a novel, and putting aside _The Decembrists_ he commenced _War and Peace_, a work conceived on a gigantic scale, and that resulted in a splendid success.

1864

His attention, as we have already seen, was however not wholly absorbed by literature, but was divided between that and the management of his property. He had during his stay among the Kirghiz in the Province of Samára, noticed how extremely cheap and how fertile was the land in those parts. He therefore wished to purchase an estate there, and visited the district in the autumn of 1864, probably with that end in view. How long he stayed there I do not know, but from a letter he wrote to Fet on 7th October, saying, 'We start for home to-day and do not know how we shall make our way to happy Yásnaya,' we know when he returned. In November he again wrote to Fet, and mentioned the laborious preparations he was at that time making for _War and Peace_:

I am in the dumps and am writing nothing, but work painfully. You
cannot imagine how hard I find the preliminary work of ploughing
deep the field in which I must sow. To consider and reconsider all
that may happen to all the future characters in the very large work
I am preparing, and to weigh millions of possible combinations
in order to select from among them a millionth part, is terribly
difficult. And that is what I am doing....

Late in that month he wrote again to Fet:

This autumn I have written a good deal of my novel. _Ars longa,
vita brevis_ comes to my mind every day. If one could but make time
to accomplish a hundredth part of what one understands--but only
a thousandth part gets done! Nevertheless the consciousness that
_I can_ is what brings happiness to men of our sort. You know that
feeling, and I experience it with particular force this year.

The year 1864 saw the publication of the first collected edition of Tolstoy's works, and though they have been already mentioned, it may be as well to give a complete list of those twenty 'trials of the pen' which preceded the appearance of _War and Peace_, and had already sufficed to place Tolstoy in the front rank of Russian writers. The following are their titles, with the years in which they were first published. They suffice to fill four very substantial volumes.

1852 _Childhood._

1853 _The Raid: A Volunteer's Story._

1854 _Boyhood._

1855 _Memoirs of a Billiard-Marker._

1855 *_Sevastopol in December._

" *_Sevastopol in May._

" *_The Wood-Felling._

1856 *_Sevastopol in August._

" _The Snow Storm._

" *_Two Hussars._

" *_Meeting a Moscow Acquaintance in the Detachment._

" _A Squire's Morning._

1857 _Youth._

" _Lucerne._

1858 _Albert._

1859 _Three Deaths._

" _Family Happiness._

1862 Educational articles in _Yásnaya Polyána_.

1863 _The Cossacks._

" _Polikoúshka._

As I am sometimes asked where satisfactory versions of these stories can be found, I may say that I think the best version of _Childhood_, _Boyhood_ and _Youth_[49] is Miss Isabel Hapgood's, and I make no apology for quoting a letter Tolstoy wrote me on 23rd December 1901, concerning the volume, _Sevastopol_,[50] translated by my wife and myself, and containing the six stories marked * in the above list. I do this with less hesitation, because his letter illustrates the cordial way in which he encourages those who do any work he can approve of, in connection with his own activity:

[49] Published by Walter Scott, Ltd., London, and by T. Y.
Crowell and Co., New York.

[50] Published by Messrs. A. Constable and Co., London, and
Funk and Wagnalls Co., New York.

I think I already wrote you how unusually the volume pleases me.
All in it is excellent: the edition and the footnotes, and chiefly
the translation, and yet more the conscientiousness with which
all this has been done. I happened to open it at _Two Hussars_ and
read on to the end just as if it were something new that had been
written in English.

One day in October Tolstoy went out for a ride on his favourite horse, an English thoroughbred named Máshka. His borzoi dogs Lúbka and Krylát accompanied him. After he had ridden some way, a hare suddenly started up and the dogs rushed after it. Tolstoy had not come out with the idea of hunting, but on seeing the dogs chasing the hare he could not restrain himself, and galloped after them, uttering the hunting cry, 'Atoú!' The weather was bad, the ground slippery, and the horse stumbled at a narrow ravine and fell, dislocating and breaking its rider's arm. The horse ran away, and Tolstoy, who was quite alone and several miles from home, fainted. When he came to, he managed to drag himself a distance of more than half a mile to the highroad, where he lay in great pain. Some peasant carts passed by, but at first he could not attract any one's attention. When at last he was noticed, in order not to alarm his wife, he asked to be taken to the hut of an old wife, Akoulína, famed as a bone-setter. In spite of all that she and her son Iván could do--soaping, pulling, twisting and bandaging the arm--they could not set it, and Tolstoy continued to suffer the greatest pain.

The Countess, who had meanwhile heard of the accident, reached the hut late at night. She at once arranged to have her husband taken home, and sent to Toúla for a doctor. The latter arrived about 3 A.M., and after administering chloroform, succeeded, with the aid of two labourers who were called in to assist, in setting the arm. On coming to, Tolstoy's profound disbelief in the efficiency of doctors, prompted him to send for another surgeon. After a consultation the two physicians decided that everything had been done properly, and that Tolstoy must lie up for six weeks to allow the arm to recover. When that time was up, Tolstoy asked for his gun and fired it off to test his arm. No sooner had he done so than he again felt great pain. He thereupon wrote to his father-in-law, Dr. Behrs, and on his advice went to Moscow to consult the specialists. These differed among themselves, but after a week's hesitation a fresh operation was decided upon, and was carried out by two competent surgeons. This time it was quite successful, and in due course the patient completely recovered the use of his arm.

Meanwhile the Countess (now nursing her second child, a daughter named Tatiána, who had been born on 4th October) remained at Yásnaya, where her eldest child, Sergius, was taken dangerously ill with smallpox and diarrhoea. This was the first occasion on which Tolstoy and his wife had been separated.

While in Moscow he concluded an arrangement with Katkóf by which he received Rs. 500 (£75) per printed sheet of sixteen pages for the serial rights in _War and Peace_, which appeared in the _Russian Messenger_. This was just ten times the amount which, when he wrote his first stories, Nekrásof had mentioned as the highest rate paid to any one for the magazine rights in a story.

1865

On 23rd January 1865, when Tolstoy had got over his accident, he wrote Fet another of those jocular letters which sometimes contain more of the real truth than will bear saying seriously:

Shall I tell you something surprising about myself? When the horse
threw me and broke my arm, and when I came to after fainting,
I said to myself: 'I am an author.' And I am an author, but a
solitary, on-the-quiet kind of author.... In a few days the first
part of 'The Year 1805' [so the first part of _War and Peace_ was
originally called] will appear. Please write me your opinion of it
in detail. I value your opinion and that of a man whom I dislike
the more, the more I grow up--Tourgénef. He will understand. All
I have printed hitherto I consider but a trial of my pen; what I
am now printing, though it pleases me better than my former work,
still seems weak--as an Introduction must be. But what follows
will be--tremendous!!!... Write what is said about it in the
different places you know, and especially how it goes with the
general public. No doubt it will pass unnoticed. I expect and wish
it to do so; if only they don't abuse me, for abuse upsets one....

I am glad you like my wife; though I love her less than my novel,
still, you know, she is my wife. Be sure you come to visit us; for
if you and Márya Petróvna do not stay here on your return from
Moscow it will really, without a joke, be too stupid!

In May 1865 one sees by a letter of Tolstoy's to Fet that one of the children had been ill and he himself had been in bed for three days and barely escaped a fever. His wife's younger sister, Tánya, she of the contralto voice who (with some admixture of his wife) served Tolstoy as model for Natásha in _War and Peace_, was spending the summer at Yásnaya, as she had done each year since her sister's marriage. The Countess Mary and her children were also there. The children, he says, were well, and out all day in the open air. He adds:

I continue to write little by little, and am content with my work.
The woodcock still attract me, and every evening I shoot _at them_,
that is, generally, past them. My farming goes on well, that is to
say, it does not disturb me much--which is all I demand of it....

In reply to a suggestion from Fet, he goes on to say that he will not write more about the Yásno-Polyána school, but hopes some day to express the conclusions to which his three years' ardent passion for that work had brought him. Then comes a reference to the state of agricultural affairs after the Emancipation, and a passing allusion to the question of famine--a subject destined to make great demands on Tolstoy's attention in later years:

Our affairs as agriculturists are now like those of a share-holder
whose shares have lost value and are unsaleable on 'Change. The
case is a bad one. Personally I only ask that it should not
demand of me so much attention and participation as to deprive me
of my tranquillity. Latterly I have been content with my private
affairs; but the general trend--with the impending misery of
famine--torments me more and more every day. It is so strange, and
even good and terrible. We have rosy radishes on our table, and
yellow butter, and well-baked, soft bread on a clean tablecloth;
the garden is green, and our young ladies in muslin dresses are
glad it is hot and shady; while _there_ that evil hunger-devil is
already at work, covering the fields with goose-weed, chafing the
hard heels of the peasants and their wives, and cracking the hoofs
of the cattle. Our weather, the corn, and the meadows, are really
terrible. How are they with you?

The letter closes with advice to Fet to transfer his chief attention from the land to literature, and a statement that Tolstoy himself has done so, and is finding life less difficult.

When Tolstoy went out hunting hares and foxes with borzoi dogs, Miss Tatiána Behrs (the Tánya alluded to above) used often to accompany him.

Between this lady and Count Sergius Tolstoy (Leo's elder brother) an attachment had grown up which caused great distress to them both, for, besides being twenty-two years older than the lady, Sergius was living with, and had a family by, the gipsy mentioned in a previous chapter, though he was not legally married. His affection for his family prevented his yielding completely to his love for Tánya and asking her to be his wife. The Behrs were quite willing that he should do so, and the young lady would have accepted him, and was much pained by the vacillation that resulted from the battle between his love for her and his affection for his family. Ultimately he resolved to be faithful to the union he had formed, and, in order to legitimise his children, went through the form of marriage with their mother in 1867. Almost at the same time, Tánya, having recovered from her disappointment, married a Mr. Kouzmínsky.

Here again one gets a slight glimpse of the experience of life which has led Tolstoy, contrary to the opinion general among the Russian 'intelligents,' to advocate faithfulness at all costs to the woman with whom one has once formed a union.

A knowledge of Tánya's story adds to the interest with which, in Tolstoy's great novel, one reads of Natásha Róstof's troubles and ultimate happiness.

Towards the end of May, Tolstoy visited the estate of Nikólsky (which after the death of his brother Nicholas had become his), and had the house there repaired. In June the whole family moved to Nikólsky, where they lived very quietly; Tolstoy continuing to write _War and Peace_. His friend D. A. Dyákof's estate was only ten miles away, and Tolstoy saw much of him at this time, besides having him at other times as a frequent visitor at Yásnaya. Dyákof was his chief adviser in agricultural matters, as well as in his efforts to improve the stock of his cattle, pigs and poultry. Almost the only other visitors at Nikólsky were the Fets; and the poet records meeting there the Countess's 'charming sister,' Tánya, and experiencing violent antipathy for the sour koumýs, about which Tolstoy was enthusiastic, and a large tub of which stood near the front door.

While living at Nikólsky Tolstoy was invited for a fortnight by a neighbouring landlord, Kiréyevsky, to a grand hunt, in which the huntsmen wore special costumes, and luxurious dinners were served in the woods. What interested Tolstoy most in all this was not the hunt, but the opportunity it afforded him of studying types of the old and new aristocracy.

At this period of his life one hears of his playing the guitar and singing passionate love-songs.

During the autumn of 1865 Tolstoy, accompanied by his eleven-year-old brother-in-law, visited the battlefield of Borodinó. They left Moscow in Dr. Behrs' carriage, with post-horses. When the time came for them to have something to eat, they found that the lunch basket had been left behind, and they had only a small basket of grapes. Thereupon Tolstoy remarked to his companion, 'I am sorry, not that we have left the basket of food behind, but because your father will be upset and will be angry with his man.' The journey took only one day, and they stayed at the monastery erected in memory of those who fell in the great fight. For two days Tolstoy investigated the scene of the conflict which he was about to describe in his novel, and he then drew the plan of the fight which appears in that work. Even in 1865 there were but few survivors of the campaign of 1812 to be found in the neighbourhood.

Tolstoy used at this time to spend whole days in the Roumyántsef Museum in Moscow, studying books and manuscripts relating to the times of Alexander I, and especially to the reformatory and Masonic movements which then sprang up in Russia, but were subsequently suppressed on political grounds.

S. A. Behrs tells us that Tolstoy

was always fond of children, and liked to have them about him. He
easily won their confidence, and seemed to have found the key to
their hearts. He appeared to have no difficulty in suiting himself
to a strange child, and with a single question set it completely at
ease, so that it began at once to chat away with perfect freedom.
Independently of this, he could divine a child's thought with
the skill of a trained educationalist. I remember his children
sometimes running up to him, and telling him they had a great
secret; and when they persisted in refusing to divulge it, he would
quietly whisper in their ears what it was. 'Ah, what a papa ours
is! How did he find it out?' they would cry, in astonishment.

He also says:

Gifted by nature with rare tact and delicacy, he is extremely
gentle in his bearing and conduct to others. I never heard him
scold a servant. Yet they all had the greatest respect for him,
were fond of him, and seemed even to fear him. Nor, with all his
zeal for sport, have I ever seen him whip a dog or beat his horse.

A servant who lived with him more than twenty years has said: 'Living in the Count's house from my childhood, I loved Leo Nikoláyevitch as though he were my father'; and in another place he remarks:

The Count had a stern appearance, but treated the servants
excellently, and made things easy for all strangers whom he met. He
has a very good heart, and when he was cross with me for anything,
I, knowing his character, used at once to leave the room, and when
next he called me, it was as though nothing unpleasant had happened.

Speaking of Tolstoy's later years the same servant says:

Leo Nikoláyevitch has now become quite a different man. From 1865
to 1870 he was active in managing the estate, and was fond of cows,
bred sheep, looked after the property, and, in a word, attended
to everything. At that time he was hot-tempered and impulsive. He
would order the trap to be brought when he wanted to go hunting.
His man, Alexis, would bring him his hunting-boots, and the Count
would shout at him, 'Why have you not dried them? You are not
worth your salt!' Alexis, knowing the Count's character, would
take the boots away, and bring them back almost directly. 'There!
now they're all right,' the Count would say, and would brighten up
instantly.

His love of the country and his dislike of towns sprang partly from his keen appreciation of the charm and loveliness of Nature. He saw fresh beauty every day, and often exclaimed: 'What wealth God has! He gives each day something to distinguish it from all the rest.'

Sportsman and agriculturist himself, he maintains that sportsmen and agriculturists alone know Nature. To quote Behrs again:

No bad weather was allowed to interfere with his daily walk. He
could put up with loss of appetite, from which he occasionally
suffered, but he could never go a day without a sharp walk in the
open air. In general, he was fond of active movement, riding,
gymnastics, but particularly walking. If his literary work chanced
to go badly, or if he wished to throw off the effects of any
unpleasantness, a long walk was his sovereign remedy. He could
walk the whole day without fatigue; and we have frequently ridden
together for ten or twelve hours. In his study he kept a pair of
dumb-bells, and sometimes had gymnastic apparatus erected there.

All luxury was distasteful to him; and much that ordinary people regard as common comforts, seemed to him harmful indulgences, bad for the souls and bodies of men. Nothing could well be more simple than the arrangement of his house at Yásnaya, substantial and solidly built as it was, with its double windows, and the Dutch stoves so necessary to warm a Russian house.

He was not at all particular about what he ate, but objected to a soft bed or spring mattress, and at one time he used to sleep on a leather-covered sofa.

He dressed very simply, and when at home never wore starched shirts or tailor-made clothes, but adapted to his own requirements the ordinary Russian blouse, having it made of woollen stuff for winter, and of linen for summer. His out-door winter dress was also an adaptation of the sheepskin _shoúba_ and peasants' _caftán_, made of the plainest material; and these afforded such good protection from the weather that they were often borrowed by members of the household as well as by visitors.

During the writing of _War and Peace_ Tolstoy generally enjoyed good spirits, and on days when his work had gone well, he would gleefully announce that he had left 'a bit of my life in the inkstand.' One of his chief recreations was to go out hare-hunting with borzoi dogs, and this he often did in company with a neighbouring landed proprietor, Bíbikof.

From October 1865 he ceased to keep his Diary, and did not renew it during the period covered by this volume.

1866

On Twelfth Night a grand masquerade was held at Yásnaya, and the festivities were kept up till past two in the morning, and were followed by a troika drive next day.

That same January the family moved to Moscow, where they hired a six-roomed apartment for Rs. 155 a month (say about £23); and there they remained for six weeks while the second part of _War and Peace_ was being printed for the _Russian Messenger_.

Among the friends Tolstoy saw most of at this time were Aksákof and Prince Obolénsky. He also attended the Moscow drawing school, and he tried his hand at sculpture--modelling a bust of his wife. It does not appear, however, that he continued this occupation long.

In May 1866 a second son, Ilyá, was born, and an English nurse introduced into the family.

During this summer an infantry regiment was stationed near Yásnaya, in which a young Sub-Lieutenant named Kolokóltsef was serving, whom the Countess Tolstoy had known in Moscow. He visited the Tolstoys, and introduced to them his Colonel Únosha, and his fellow-officer Ensign Stasulévitch (brother of the Liberal editor of the monthly magazine, _The Messenger of Europe_), who had been degraded to the ranks because, while he was on prison-duty, a prisoner had escaped. Ensign Stasulévitch was middle-aged, but he had only recently regained his rank as officer and joined the regiment commanded by his former comrade, Colonel Únosha.

One day Stasulévitch and Kolokóltsef called on Tolstoy and told him that a soldier, serving as secretary in one of the companies of the regiment, had struck his Company Commander, and was to be tried by court-martial. They asked Tolstoy to undertake the man's defence, and he, having always regarded capital punishment with abhorrence, readily agreed to do so.

The circumstances of the case were these. The soldier, Shiboúnin, was a man of very limited intelligence, whose chief occupation was writing out reports. When he had any money he spent it on solitary drinking. The Captain in command of his company, a Pole, apparently disliked him, and frequently found fault with his reports and made him rewrite them. This treatment Shiboúnin bitterly resented; and one day, when he had been drinking, on being told to rewrite a document he had prepared, he insulted and struck the Captain. By law the penalty for a private who strikes his officer is death. Tolstoy nevertheless hoped to save the man's life, and obtained permission to plead on his behalf. The trial took place on 6th June, and the members of the court-martial were Colonel Únosha, Stasulévitch, and Kolokóltsef; the latter being merely a light-headed youngster.

Tolstoy, when telling me of the incident, remarked that of the four occasions on which he has spoken in public, this was the time that he did so with most assurance and satisfaction to himself. He had written out his speech; the main point of which was that Shiboúnin was not responsible for his actions, being abnormal, and having from the combined effect of intemperance and the monotony of his occupation, become idiotic and obsessed by an idea that his Company Commander did not understand report writing, and unfairly rejected work faultlessly done. The law decrees a mitigation of sentence for crimes committed by those who are not in the full possession of their senses; and as this contradicts the paragraph allotting death as the sole punishment for a soldier who strikes his officer, Tolstoy argued that mercy should be extended to the prisoner.

The Court adjourned to consider its verdict, and (as Tolstoy subsequently learnt) Stasulévitch was in favour of mercy. The Colonel, who was more of a military machine than a human being, demanded the death sentence, and the decision therefore rested with the boyish Sub-Lieutenant, who (submitting to his Colonel) voted for death.

Tolstoy wished to appeal (through his aunt, the Countess A. A. Tolstoy) to Alexander II for a pardon; but with characteristic disregard of details, he omitted to mention the name of the regiment in which the affair had occurred, and this enabled the Minister of War, Milútin, to delay the presentation of the petition until Shiboúnin had been shot; which occurred on 9th August. Tolstoy's appeal never, therefore, reached the Emperor.

In contrast with the action of the Colonel and the Minister, was that of the peasants of the district, who flocked in crowds to see the prisoner; bringing him milk, eggs, home-made linen and all the gifts their poverty could afford. When the day of execution arrived, Shiboúnin went quite impassively to his death; to all appearance incapable of understanding what was happening. The people thronged around the post to which he was to be tied--the women weeping and some of them fainting. They fetched a priest to perform Masses at his grave, and paid for the service to be repeated all day. At night contributions of copper money, linen, and candles such as are burnt in Russian churches, were laid upon his grave. Next day the Masses were recommenced, and were continued until the local police forbade any more religious services, and levelled the grave that the people might not continue to visit it.

The knowledge of such a difference between the spirit of the governors and the governed, helps us once again to understand Tolstoy's ultimate conviction that Government and the administration of law are essentially evil things, always tending to make the world worse and not better. In later life we may be sure he would not have been content to base his plea for mercy on merely legal grounds.

From time to time he continued to be troubled with ill-health; for instance, in July 1866 he writes that he is confined to the house with pains in the stomach which make it impossible for him to turn quickly.

In November--contrary to what he had often said in the past and was to return to in later life--he expresses his sense of the importance of authorship. Fet, criticising something in _War and Peace_, had quoted the words, _irritabilis poetarum gens_, and Tolstoy, replying 'Not I,' welcomes the criticism, begs for more, and goes on to say:

What have you been doing? Not on the Zémstvo [County Council]
or in farming (all that is compulsory activity such as we do
elementally and with as little will of our own as the ants who make
an ant-hill; in that sphere there is nothing good or bad), but
what are you doing in thought, with the mainspring of your being,
which alone has been, and is, and will endure in the world? Is that
spring still alive? Does it wish to manifest itself? How does it
express its wish? Or has it forgotten how to express itself? That
is the chief thing.

By the autumn of this year the railway southwards from Moscow to Koursk had been constructed as far as Toúla, making it easier to get from Yásnaya to Moscow, and to the rest of Europe. Yet Tolstoy comparatively seldom felt tempted to leave his much-loved, tranquil, busy, country life, in which alone he found himself able to work with the maximum of efficiency.

About this time he undertook the planting of a birch wood, which has since grown up and become valuable.

1867

During the summer of 1867 Tolstoy, despite the dislike and distrust of doctors--which he shares with Rousseau, and which he has again and again expressed in his works--was induced by the state of his health and by his wife's persuasion, to consult the most famous Moscow doctor of the time, Professor Zahárin, on whose advice he drank mineral water during several weeks.

Writing to Fet he says:

If I wrote to you, dear friend, every time I think of you, you
would receive two letters a day from me. But one cannot get
everything said, and sometimes one is lazy and sometimes too busy,
as is the case at present. I have recently returned from Moscow
and have begun a strict cure under the direction of Zahárin; and
most important of all, I am printing my novel at Ris's, and have
to prepare and send off MSS. and proofs every day under threat of
a fine and of delayed publication. That is both pleasant and also
hard, as you know.

He goes on to criticise Tourgénef's novel, _Dym_ (_Smoke_), which had appeared that year:

About _Smoke_ I meant to write long ago, and, of course, just what
you have now written. That is why we love one another--because we
think alike with the 'wisdom of the heart' as you call it. (Thank
you very much for that letter also: 'the wisdom of the heart' and
'the wisdom of the mind' explain much to me.) About _Smoke_, I
think that the strength of poetry lies in love; and the direction
of that strength depends on character. Without strength of love
there is no poetry; but strength falsely directed--the result of
the poet's having an unpleasant, weak character--creates dislike.
In _Smoke_ there is hardly any love of anything, and very little
poetry. There is only love of light and playful adultery, and
therefore the poetry of that novel is repulsive. That, as you
see, is just what you write about it. Only I fear to express
this opinion because I cannot look soberly at the author, whose
personality I do not like; but I fancy my impression is the general
one. One more writer played out!

In November 1867 we find the whole family again established for a while in a lodging in Moscow, where they seem to have remained for a large part of the winter.

Here Fet visited Tolstoy and announced to him that he had decided to arrange a Literary Evening for the benefit of the famine-stricken peasants of Mtsensk, the district in which Fet's estate lay. Tolstoy met the suggestion with irony, maintaining that Fet had invented the famine; and in reply to a request that he would ensure the success of the evening by reading something, flatly refused to do so, declaring that he never had and never could do such a thing as read in public. Still, he lent Fet the chapter of _War and Peace_ containing the wonderful description of the retreat of the Russian army from Smolénsk in fearful drought. This as yet existed only in proof, not having been published. (It forms Chapter V of Part X of Volume II in Mrs. Constance Garnett's version: the best English rendering of that novel.) Read by Prince Kougoúshef, the poet and dramatist, it evoked thunders of applause.

1868

On 12th April 1868 Tourgénef, writing to Fet, said:

I have just finished the fourth volume of _War and Peace_.
There are things in it that are unbearable, and things that are
wonderful; and the wonderful things (they predominate) are so
magnificently good that we have never had anything better written
by anybody; and it is doubtful whether anything as good has been
written.

About the same time V. P. Bótkin wrote from Petersburg: 'Tolstoy's novel is having a really remarkable success; every one here is reading it, and they not merely read it but become enthusiastic about it.'

1869

The Epilogue was not completed till late in 1869. On 30th August Tolstoy writes: 'Part VI [_i.e._ Part II of the Epilogue] which I expected to have finished a month ago, is not ready'; and then in the next sentence, he goes into ecstasies over Schopenhauer:

Do you know what this summer has been for me? An unceasing ecstasy
over Schopenhauer, and a series of mental enjoyments such as I
never experienced before. I have bought all his works, and have
read and am reading them (as well as Kant's). And assuredly no
student in his course has learnt so much and discovered so much
as I have during this summer. I do not know whether I shall ever
change my opinion, but at present I am confident that Schopenhauer
is the greatest genius among men. You said he had written something
or other on philosophic subjects. What do you mean by 'something
or other'? It is the whole world in an extraordinarily vivid and
beautiful reflection. I have begun translating him. Won't you
take up that work? We would publish it together. After reading
him I cannot conceive how his name can remain unknown. The only
explanation is the one he so often repeats, that except idiots
there is scarcely any one else in the world....

He goes on to say that he was starting next day for the Government of Pénza to look at an estate he meant to buy 'in those out-of-the-way parts.' The servant who accompanied Tolstoy has told how they travelled third class from Moscow to Nízhni, and how Tolstoy chatted with his fellow-travellers, so that many of them took him 'for a common man.' The idea of buying the estate in Pénza was ultimately abandoned.

He had by then completed the last part of _War and Peace_, which was to appear complete in book form in November. Two volumes had been published in 1866, three more in 1868, and the sixth was not ready till this year, 1869. (In subsequent editions the book was rearranged, first into five and then into four volumes.)

Though he had so completely conquered the laziness of which he accused himself in early manhood as to have become a regular, indefatigable and extremely hard worker, yet after the completion of so gigantic a task he felt the need of recuperation and in summer wrote to Fet: 'It is now my deadest time: I neither write nor think, but feel happily stupid,' and he adds that he goes out shooting woodcock and has killed eight at an outing.