Chapter I: of Part V of Anna Karénina, where they are attributed to (2)

That at this time he already felt something of the strong repugnance he so strenuously expressed in later years for luxury and profuse expenditure, is indicated by his comment on the death of his acquaintance, the author V. P. Bótkin, which took place in 1869. The latter, a member of a wealthy family of tea-merchants, having lived with economy till he knew his death was approaching, then hired a splendid lodging in Petersburg, fitted it up with all possible comfort and luxury, engaged a _chef_ from the kitchen of the Tsarévitch, paid daily attention to the dinner _menu_, and engaged famous musicians to perform quartets at his lodgings. To the magnificent feasts he gave every day (at which, owing to the state of his health, he himself participated chiefly as a spectator) he gathered a select circle of those friends whose conversation interested him. He told his brother that these arrangements for the close of his life gave him the keenest pleasure, and that 'birds of Paradise are singing in my soul.' On 4th October a quartet and a banquet had been arranged as usual, and many guests were expected--but V. P. Bótkin lay dead in his bed.

Tolstoy, hearing of this, wrote to Fet:

I was terribly shocked by the character of V. P. Bótkin's death. If
what is told of it is true, it is terrible. How is it that among
his friends not one was found to give to that supreme moment of
life the character suitable to it?

Before _War and Peace_ was finished, the Countess had borne four children, the fourth being a boy, born on 20th May 1869, and christened Leo--nursing them all herself, as she did her subsequent children, with two exceptions mentioned later on. Her willingness to do her duty in this respect was exceptional among women of her class, for the employment of wet-nurses was extremely common in Russia.

Up to the age of ten, the children were taught Russian and music by the Countess, and she even found time to make their clothes herself till they reached that age. Besides managing the household, her brother tells us that during the composition of _War and Peace_ she found time to copy it out no less than seven times, a statement not to be taken literally: for greatly as Tolstoy believes in the proverb that 'Gold is got by sifting,' and indefatigably as he revises his work, not all the chapters of _War and Peace_ will have been altered that number of times. With Tolstoy the children learnt arithmetic; and they learnt to read French out of illustrated volumes of Jules Verne.

In all that concerned the education of the children, his wife at this time willingly constituted herself the executant of her husband's decisions, which were based largely on J. J. Rousseau's _Émile_, and were relaxed only in so far as the Countess was unable to carry them out, and as Tolstoy found himself too much occupied with other affairs to attempt to do so. Later on there was less accord between the parents.

With the first child they tried to do without a nurse, but the attempt was unsuccessful, and subsequently Russian nurses and foreign _bonnes_ were employed.

Toys were not allowed in the nursery, but much liberty was given to the children. No violent or severe punishments were inflicted on them, and none but their parents might award the punishments that were administered. They aimed at gaining their children's confidence by timely petting and kindly treatment.

If one of the children told a falsehood, this was treated as a serious matter, and the punishment usually consisted in the parents treating the child coldly. As soon, however, as it showed that it was really sorry, the punishment ceased; but a child was never persuaded to say it was sorry or to promise not to repeat its fault.

All the grown-up people in the house were expected to remember that children are apt to copy and imitate all that they see and hear; and the children were not kept away from the adults, except at lesson time. Consequently when eight o'clock came and the children went to bed, Tolstoy would often remark: 'Now, we are freer!'

Partly that they might learn English, partly because Tolstoy believed that education was freer in England than elsewhere, young English governesses were engaged to take charge of his children from the age of three to nine. He was extremely fortunate in his first choice, for the young lady remained with the Tolstoys for six years, and after her marriage continued in most friendly relations with the whole family.

He aimed at acquainting the children with Nature, and developing their love of it, of animals, and of insects. He liked to let them realise their impotence and their complete dependence on their elders, but he always did this with kindly consideration.

The children were not allowed to order the servants about, but had to _ask_ them for anything they wanted; and that a good example might be set, every one in the house was expected to do the same. This was the more important, because the peasant servants in Russia, even after the Emancipation, were scarcely regarded as belonging to the same race of human beings as their masters, and a famous Russian author could say without any exaggeration, 'The balcony was rotten. Only servants went there; the family did not go there.' But, to avoid giving a wrong impression, I must here make a reservation. Just because there was no idea of the two classes overlapping, and because so wide a gap existed between them that they dressed quite differently (the peasants having their own costume and style of garments) very cordial and sincere good feeling often grew up between master and man, or between proprietress and servant, and real human interest, such as is shown in Tolstoy's descriptions of the servants in _Childhood_, and in his other stories. It was, and is, not at all unusual for Russian servants to intervene in the conversation of the family or visitors; and the whole relation between employers and employed was quite different to what it is in England, where on Sundays the maid might be mistaken for her mistress, except that she often looks more attractive than the latter.

The plan adopted in the Yásno-Polyána school, where no child was obliged to learn anything it did not care to learn, had to be abandoned in the family; but some scope was allowed to the children to reject what they had no capacity for, and they were never punished for neglecting to prepare lessons, though they were rewarded when they learnt well.

To illustrate Tolstoy's way of developing the minds of those about him, Behrs tells of his own case when, as a youth, he stayed at Yásnaya:

Regardless of my youth at the time, I remember that Tolstoy
discussed quite seriously with me all the scientific and
philosophic questions it came into my head to put to him. He always
answered simply and clearly, and never hesitated to admit the fact
if he himself did not understand this or that matter. Often my talk
with him took the form of a dispute, on which I embarked in spite
of my consciousness of his immense superiority.

The children were always eager to go for walks with their father, to answer his call to practise Swedish gymnastics, and to be on his side in any game he taught them. In winter they skated a good deal; but clearing the snow off the pond under his leadership was an even greater pleasure than the skating itself.

Before breakfast he would go for a walk with his brother-in-law, or they would ride down to bathe in the river that flows by one side of the estate. At morning coffee the whole family assembled, and it was generally a very merry meal, Tolstoy being up to all sorts of jokes, till he rose with the words, 'One must get to work,' and went off to his study, taking with him a tumbler full of tea. While at work in his room not even his wife was allowed to disturb him; though at one time his second child and eldest daughter, Tatiána, while still quite a little girl, was privileged to break this rule. The rare days (generally in summer) when he relaxed, were very welcome to the children, for their father's presence always brought life and animation with it. Generally after dinner, before resuming work, he would read a book not directly connected with the task he had in hand. It was often an English novel; and we hear of his reading Anthony Trollope with approval, Mrs. Henry Wood, who, he says, made a great impression on him, and Miss Braddon. His dislike of George Sand remained unshaken, and he considered _Consuelo_ to be a mixture of the pretentious and the spurious. Goethe (especially _Faust_) he admired; while Molière's plays and Hugo's _Les Misérables_ appealed to him very strongly indeed. In the evening he was fond of playing duets with his sister. He used to find it hard to keep up with her in playing long pieces with which he was not quite familiar, and when in difficulties he would say something to make her laugh, and cause her to play slower. If he did not succeed by means of this ruse, he would sometimes stop and solemnly take off one of his boots, as though that must infallibly help him out of the difficulty; and he would then recommence, with the remark, 'Now, it will go all right!'

During the early years of his married life few visitors came to Yásnaya, except the numerous members of the Tolstoy-Behrs families, who stayed there chiefly in summer. The poet A. A. Fet, D. A. Dyákof, whom he had known from boyhood and had described in _Youth_, N. N. Stráhof, the philosopher and critic, for whose judgment he had great respect and whom he frequently consulted throughout his literary career, and Prince L. D. Ouroúsof, a cousin of the Prince Ouroúsof he had known during the siege of Sevastopol, seem to have been almost the only friends who visited him in the years first following his marriage; and this suited Tolstoy very well, for to entertain many visitors would have seriously interrupted the absorbing work in which he was continually engaged.

Fet has so often been mentioned in this volume that it is time to devote a few lines to describing a man who has come in for much abuse on account of the anti-Emancipationist sympathies expressed in some of his writings. Like Tolstoy, he had grown up with no idea that it is incumbent on men of education and capacity to organise the society of which they are members, or by political action to remedy such abuses as inevitably arise among human beings who do not keep the task of systematic social organisation constantly in view. Of the impression Fet's political opinions made on the Liberals, one may judge by a remark Tourgénef addressed to him in a letter written in 1874: 'Twenty years ago, at the height of Nicholas I's _régime_, you dumbfounded me by announcing your opinion that the mind of man could devise nothing superior to the position of the Russian aristocracy of that day, nor anything nobler or more admirable.' The Liberals saw in Fet a political reactionary--and so he was; but any one who reads his _Recollections_ may also see how large a measure of personal worth can be combined with political indifferentism--a quality many Russians of his generation were brought up to regard as a virtue. In private life he was a really worthy man, and Tolstoy once very truly remarked to him:

There are some people whose talk is far above their actual
morality; but there are also some whose talk is below that
level. You are one who is so afraid of his sermon being above
his practice, that you intentionally talk far below your actual
practice.

While still a young cavalry officer Fet began to write poetry, for which he had real talent; and after leaving the army he continued his literary career as an Art-for-Art's-sake-ist, producing verse translations of Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Juvenal, Catullus, Tibullus, Propertius, and Persius, besides original works of his own in prose and verse, and (after Tolstoy's suggestion, already recorded) translations from the German of Schopenhauer's _The World as Will and Idea_, and Goethe's _Faust_.

In his dislike, or perhaps one should say ignorance, of politics, commerce, and that great industrial revolution of the Western world that has been the most conspicuous achievement of the last one hundred and fifty years, as well as in his love of pure art, chiefly literary, he had much in common with Tolstoy. They could talk with profound sympathy of all that related to art, and they were alike in their love of country life and in their relation to agriculture, as well as in the fact that the great problems of life centred for them round their own personality rather than around the community to which they belonged. Patriotic by instinct, it was no part of their philosophy to be so; at least they never dreamed of that newer patriotism which seeks to manage the production and distribution of the national wealth so that every member of the community may have an opportunity to live in decent conditions. They had therefore at this period much in common; and one sees by Tolstoy's letters how greatly they enjoyed each other's society, though a time was coming when their friendship would wane.

Tolstoy had a strong dislike of leaving home even for a few days. When it was absolutely necessary for him to go to Moscow he would grumble at his hard fate, and Behrs, when he accompanied him, noticed how town life depressed Tolstoy, making him fidgety and even irritable. When returning from a journey, or a hunting expedition, he would express his anxiety by exclaiming, 'If only all's well at home!' After he had been away from Yásnaya, Tolstoy never failed to give the home party full and amusing accounts of what he had seen and heard.

A distinguishing feature of Tolstoy, already remarked upon, but so strongly marked that it can hardly be insisted on too much, was the ardent and whole-hearted way in which he threw himself into whatever occupation he took up. On this point Prince D. D. Obolénsky says: 'I have seen Count L. N. Tolstoy in all phases of his creative activity.... Whatever his occupation, he did it with conviction, firmly believing in the value of what he was doing, and always fully absorbed by it. I remember him as a man of the world, and have met him at balls, and I remember a remark he once made, "See what poetry there is in women's ball-dresses, what elegance, how much thought, how much charm even in the flowers pinned to the dresses!" I remember him as an ardent sportsman, as a beekeeper, as a gardener; I remember his enthusiasm for farming, for tree planting, fruit culture, horse breeding, and much else.'

A housekeeper who was with him for nine years, said of him:

The Count himself looked after everything, and demanded extreme
cleanliness in the cowhouse and in the pig-styes and in the
sheep-cot. In particular he delighted in his pigs, of which he had
as many as 300, paired off in separate styes.... There the Count
would not allow the least dirt. Every day I and my assistants had
to wash them all, and wipe the floor and walls of the styes; then
the Count, on passing through the piggery of a morning, would be
very pleased, and would remark aloud: 'What management!... What
good management!' But God have mercy on us if he noticed the
least dirt! That at once made him shout out angrily.... The Count
was very hasty, and a doctor who used to come to Yásnaya said to
him more than once in my presence: 'You must not get so angry,
Count, it is very bad for your health....' 'I can't help it,' he
would reply. 'I want to restrain myself, but can't do it. That,
it seems, is the way I am made!'... His farming gave the Count a
good revenue in those days. Besides the pigs and their litters, he
had 80 cows, 500 good sheep, and very many fowls. We used to make
excellent butter, which we sold in Moscow at 60 copecks [about 19
pence] a lb.

His management of property was characteristically personal. He never took shares in any joint-stock company, but he bought land, bred cattle and horses of good quality, planted a large apple-orchard, as well as a quantity of other trees, and in general he acquired property he could manage himself, or (for he entrusted the management of his Samára estates to stewards) over which he had full control. He has always been more alive to the dangers and evils of commercial companies and large engineering and industrial undertakings, than to the good they have achieved by irrigating arid lands, uniting distant realms, and lightening man's toil by making iron bear some of his burdens for him.

Tolstoy furnishes an example of the well-known fact that men of artistic temperament are often untidy. Though he acknowledges the advantages of neatness in general, he often remarked that it is a quality most frequently found in shallow natures. He himself simply could not, and therefore did not try to, keep his things in order. When he undressed he let his clothes or boots drop where he stood; and if he happened to be moving from place to place, his garments remained strewn about the room, and sometimes on the floor. Behrs remarks.

I noticed that to pack his things for a journey cost him great
effort, and when I accompanied him I used very willingly to do
it for him, and thereby pleased him very much. I remember that
once, for some reason, I did not at all wish to pack for him. He
noticed this, and with characteristic delicacy did not ask me to,
but put his things into his portmanteau himself; and I can assert
positively that no one else, were they to try, could have got them
into such fearful disorder as they were in, in that portmanteau.

It was a peculiarity of Tolstoy's that he not only liked to have his own sleep out without being disturbed, but that he never could or would wake any one from sleep, and in cases of absolute necessity would ask some one else to relieve him of that disagreeable task.

Behrs recounts that when they sat up late, the man-servant sometimes fell asleep in his chair and omitted to serve up the cold supper. Tolstoy would never allow him to be disturbed on these occasions, but would himself go to the pantry to fetch the supper, and would do this stealthily, and with the greatest caution, so that it became a kind of amusing game. He would get quite cross with Behrs if the latter accidentally let the plates clatter or made any other noise.

Many years later, alluding in my presence to this peculiarity of his, Tolstoy remarked, 'While a man is asleep he is at any rate not sinning.'

1870

On 4th February 1870 Tolstoy wrote to Fet:

I received your letter, dear Afanásy Afanásyevitch, on 1st
February, but even had I received it somewhat sooner I could not
have come. You write, 'I am _alone, alone_!' And when I read it
I thought, What a lucky fellow--_alone_! I have a wife, three
children, and a fourth at the breast, two old aunts, a nurse,
and two housemaids. And they are all ill together: fever, high
temperature, weakness, headaches, and coughs. In that state your
letter found me. They are now beginning to get better, but out of
ten people, I and my old aunt alone turn up at the dinner table.
And since yesterday I myself am ill with my chest and side. There
is much, very much, I want to tell you about. I have been reading a
lot of Shakespear, Goethe, Poúshkin, Gógol, and Molière, and about
all of them there is much I want to say to you. I do not take in
a single magazine or newspaper this year, and I consider it very
useful not to.

S. A. Behrs tells us that Tolstoy 'never read newspapers, and considered them useless, and when they contain false news, even harmful. In his humorous way he would sometimes parody a newspaper style when speaking of domestic affairs.' His attitude towards journalists and critics (except his friend Stráhof) was rather scornful, and he was indignant when any one classed them even with third-rate authors. He considered that it is a misuse of the printing-press to publish so much that is unnecessary, uninteresting, and worst of all, inartistic. He seldom read criticisms of his own work. 'His feeling towards periodicals in general had its source in his intense dislike of the exploitation of works of art. He would smile contemptuously at hearing it suggested that a real artist produces his works for the sake of money.'

Having said this much about his characteristics and peculiarities, let us note the extent to which his life and mode of thought at this time approximated to his later teaching. His humane relations towards the peasants, his condemnation of many of the manifestations of modern civilisation, his simplicity in household matters and dress, his exemplary family life, humane educational ideals, deep love of sincerity and of industry (including physical labour), his ardent search for truth and for self-improvement, his gradually increasing accessibility to and regard for others, his undoubted love of family and his hatred of violence--indicate that the ideals of his later life were not very far from him, even before the commencement of the conversion told of in his _Confession_.

On 17th February Tolstoy writes to Fet:

I hoped to visit you the night of the 14th, but could not do so.
As I wrote you, we were all ill,--I last. I went out yesterday for
the first time. What stopped me was pain in the eyes, which is
increased by wind and sleeplessness. I now, to my great regret,
have to postpone my visit to you till Lent. I must go to Moscow to
take my aunt to my sister's, and to see an oculist about my eyes.

It is a pity that one can only get to your place after passing
a sleepless, cigarette-smoky, stuffy, railway-carriage,
conversational night. You want to read me a story of cavalry
life.... And I don't want to read you anything, because I am not
writing anything; but I very much want to talk about Shakespear and
Goethe and the drama in general. This whole winter I am occupied
only with the drama; and it happens to me, as it usually happens
to people who till they are forty have not thought of a certain
subject or formed any conception of it, and then suddenly with
forty-year-old clearness turn their attention to this new untasted
subject--it seems to them that they discern in it much that is new.
All winter I have enjoyed myself lying down, drowsing, playing
bézique, going on snowshoes, skating, and most of all lying in bed
(ill) while characters from a drama or comedy have performed for
me. And they perform very well. It is about that I want to talk to
you. In that, as in everything, you are a classic, and understand
the essence of the matter very deeply. I should like also to read
Sophocles and Euripides.

There we see Tolstoy, as always, ardently devoting his attention to some great subject--which happens, this time, to be dramatic art. So keen is he, that his mind is full of it whatever else he may be doing; and so vivid is his imagination that the characters of the plays perform for him whether he is standing up or lying down. How real a grip he obtained of the subject with very little theatre-going, was shown seventeen years later, when he wrote one of the most powerful dramas ever produced, and followed it up by an excellent comedy: both pieces being so good that they are constantly revived in Russian theatres, besides having achieved success in other countries.

At the point we have reached there was no break in the manner of Tolstoy's life. He continued to live quietly at Yásnaya, and to concern himself chiefly with literature, and also with the management of his estates and the welfare of his family. Children continued to be born in rapid succession, and with the increasing family his means also increased. But we have come to the middle of that tranquil period of sixteen years which succeeded his marriage, and here, while--as one would say of another man--he was indefatigably studying the drama; or while--as one is inclined to say of him--he was resting and recuperating before undertaking his next great work, it is convenient to close this chapter.

CHIEF AUTHORITIES FOR CHAPTER IX

Birukof.

Fet.

Behrs.

Bitovt.

_Yasnaya Polyana_, P. A. Sergeyenko: _Niva_, No. 34, 1908.

_L. N. Tolstoy_; _Monografiya Andreevitcha_: Petersburg, 1905.

For much information in this chapter as well as elsewhere I am indebted to Tolstoy himself, to the Countess S. A. Tolstoy, to his sister, and particularly to his daughter, Mary Lvovna, Princess Obolensky.

Information concerning the execution of the soldier is given in _Pravo_ for 1903.

Prince D. D. Obolensky's _Vospominaniya_ appeared in _Roussky Arhiv_, 1896.

See also, _Graf L. N. Tolstoy_, _Vospominaniya S. P. Arbouzova_: Moscow, 1908.

Arbouzof was in Tolstoy's service twenty-two years. He gives his master an excellent character; and though very inaccurate, his naive chatter is readable, and throws light on Tolstoy's character.