Chapter II: Childhood and Early Manhood (1)

Yásnaya Polyána. Aunt Tatiána. The German Tutor. The brothers: Nicholas, Sergius and Demetrius. Doúnetchka. The house-serfs. A family scene. Pilgrims and saints. Death of father and grandmother. Flying. Personal appearance. Corporal punishment. Originality. Riding lessons. The Countess Osten-Saken. Aunt P. I. Úshkof. Books. Abstract speculations. Kazán University. Imprisonment. Diary. Demetrius. Books: Dickens and Rousseau. Yásnaya again. Petersburg. Consistency. Rudolph the Musician. Women. Gambling. Gipsy girls. Money difficulties. The liberty of Russian nobles.

YÁSNAYA POLYÁNA (Bright Glade), where Tolstoy was born, had been an ancestral estate of the Volkónskys and belonged to his mother, the Princess Marie. It is situated ten miles south of Toúla, in a pleasantly undulating country. The estate, which is enclosed by an old brick wall, is well wooded and has many avenues of lime-trees, a river and four lakes. In Tolstoy's grandfather's time, sentinels kept guard at the small, round, brick towers, which now stand neglected at the entrance of the main birch avenue leading to the house. Something of the great confidence in himself and readiness to despise others, which despite all his efforts to be humble, characterise Tolstoy, may be due to the fact that he was born and grew up on an estate where for generations his ancestors had been the only people of importance.

'Aunty' Tatiána Alexándrovna Érgolsky had been brought up by his grandmother on an equality with her own children. She (Tatiána) was resolute, self-sacrificing, and, says Tolstoy,

must have been very attractive with her enormous plait of crisp,
black, curly hair, her jet-black eyes, and vivacious, energetic
expression. When I remember her she was more than forty, and I
never thought about her as pretty or not pretty. I simply loved
her eyes, her smile, and her dusky broad little hand, with its
energetic little cross vein.

We had two aunts and a grandmother; they all had more right to us
than Tatiána Alexándrovna, whom we called Aunt only by habit (for
our kinship was so distant that I could never remember what it
was), but she took the first place in our upbringing by right of
love to us (like Buddha in the story of the wounded swan), and we
felt her right.

I had fits of passionately tender love for her.

I remember once, when I was about five, how I squeezed in behind
her on the sofa in the drawing-room and she caressingly touched me
with her hand. I caught it and began to kiss it, and to cry with
tender love of her....

Aunty Tatiána had the greatest influence on my life. From early
childhood she taught me the spiritual delight of love. She taught
me this joy not by words; but by her whole being she filled me with
love. I saw, I felt, how she enjoyed loving, and I understood the
joy of love. This was the first thing.

Secondly, she taught me the delights of an unhurried, quiet life.

Another, though a much less important, influence was that of the tutor, Theodore Rössel (who figures as Karl Ivánovitch Mauer in Tolstoy's early sketch, _Childhood_). Tolstoy owes his excellent knowledge of German and French to the fact that his father, following a custom common among well-to-do Russians, engaged foreign teachers and let his children learn languages not so much from books as by conversation, while they were still quite young. Rössel's 'honest, straightforward, and loving nature' helped to develop the boy's good qualities.

Tolstoy got on well, too, with his brothers, who were five-and-a-half, two, and one year older than himself, as well as with his little sister Marie, his junior by a year-and-a-half.

He not only loved, but deeply respected, his eldest brother Nicholas (pet name, Nikólenka), whose influence lasted until, and even after, his death in 1860. Of him Tolstoy says:

He was a wonderful boy, and later a wonderful man. Tourgénef used
to say of him very truly, that he only lacked certain faults
to be a great writer. He lacked the chief fault needed for
authorship--vanity, and was not at all interested in what people
thought of him. The qualities of a writer which he possessed were,
first of all, a fine artistic sense, an extremely developed sense
of proportion, a good-natured gay sense of humour, an extraordinary
inexhaustible imagination, and a truthful and highly moral view of
life; and all this without the slightest conceit. His imagination
was such that for hours together he could tell fairy-tales or
ghost-stories, or amusing tales in the style of Mrs. Radcliffe,
without a pause and with such vivid realisation of what he was
narrating that one forgot it was all invention.... When he was not
narrating or reading (he read a great deal) he used to draw. He
almost invariably drew devils with horns and twisted moustaches,
intertwined in the most varied attitudes and engaged in the most
diverse occupations. These drawings were also full of imagination.

It was he who, when I was five and my brothers, Dmítry six and
Sergéy seven, announced to us that he possessed a secret by means
of which, when disclosed, all men would become happy: there would
be no more disease, no trouble, no one would be angry with anybody,
all would love one another, and all would become 'Ant-Brothers.'...
We even organised a game of Ant-Brothers, which consisted in
sitting under chairs, sheltering ourselves with boxes, screening
ourselves with handkerchiefs, and cuddling against one another
while thus crouching in the dark.... The Ant-Brotherhood was
revealed to us, but not the chief secret: the way for all men
to cease suffering any misfortune, to leave off quarrelling and
being angry, and become continuously happy; this secret he said
he had written on a green stick, buried by the road at the edge
of a certain ravine, at which spot (since my body must be buried
somewhere) I have asked to be buried in memory of Nikólenka.
Besides this little stick, there was also a certain Fanfarónof
Hill, up which he said he could lead us, if only we would fulfil
all the appointed conditions. These were: first, to stand in a
corner and not think of a white bear. I remember how I used to get
into a corner and try (but could not possibly manage) not to think
of a white bear. The second condition was to walk without wavering
along a crack between the boards of the floor; and the third was,
for a whole year not to see a hare, alive or dead or cooked; and
it was necessary to swear not to reveal these secrets to any one.
He who fulfilled these, and other more difficult conditions which
Nikólenka would communicate later, would have one wish, whatever it
might be, fulfilled.

Nikólenka, as I now conjecture, had probably read or heard of the
Freemasons--of their aspirations toward the happiness of mankind,
and of the mysterious initiatory rites on entering their order; he
had probably also heard about the Moravian Brothers [in Russian
_ant_ is _mouravéy_].

Writing when he was over seventy, Tolstoy adds:

The ideal of ant-brothers lovingly clinging to one another, though
not under two arm-chairs curtained by handkerchiefs, but of all
mankind under the wide dome of heaven, has remained the same for
me. As I then believed that there existed a little green stick
whereon was written the message which could destroy all evil in
men and give them universal welfare, so I now believe that such
truth exists and will be revealed to men, and will give them all it
promises.

It was, however, Tolstoy's second brother, Sergius (or Sergéy: pet name, Seryózha), whom Tolstoy in his young days most enthusiastically admired and wished to imitate. Sergius was handsome, proud, straightforward, and singularly sincere. Of him Leo Tolstoy says:

I loved and wished to be like him. I admired his handsome
appearance, his singing (he was always singing), his drawing,
his gaiety and especially (strange as it may seem to say so) the
spontaneity of his egotism. I myself was always aware of myself
and self-conscious; I always guessed, rightly or wrongly, what
other people thought or felt about me, and this spoilt my joy in
life. This probably is why in others I specially liked the opposite
feature--spontaneity of egotism. And for this I specially loved
Seryózha. The word _loved_ is not correct. I loved Nikólenka; but
for Seryózha I was filled with admiration as for something quite
apart from and incomprehensible to me.

Of the third brother, Demetrius (or Dmítry: pet name, Mítenka), only a year older than himself, Tolstoy tells us:

I hardly remember him as a boy. I only know by hearsay that as a
child he was very capricious. He was nearest to me in age and I
played with him oftenest, but did not love him as much as I loved
Seryózha, nor as I loved and respected Nikólenka. He and I lived
together amicably. I do not recollect that we quarrelled. Probably
we did, and we may even have fought.... As a child I remember
nothing special about Mítenka except his childish merriment.

Tolstoy says he was 'afraid of beggars, and of one of the Volkónskys, who used to pinch me; but, I think, of no one else.'

A girl, Doúnetchka Temeshóf, was adopted as a member of the family. She was a natural daughter of a wealthy bachelor friend of Tolstoy's father.

I remember how, when I had already learnt French, I was made to
teach her that alphabet. At first it went all right (we were both
about five years old), but later she probably became tired, and
ceased to name correctly the letters I pointed out. I insisted. She
began to cry. I did the same, and when our elders came, we could
say nothing owing to our hopeless tears.

In his later recollections of her he says:

She was not clever, but was a good, simple girl; and, above all, so
pure that we boys never had any but brotherly relations with her.

By which he means that there was no flirtation.

The relations between the family and its servants, who were serfs (and of whom there were about thirty), were, as in many a Russian family, often really affectionate. One instance of a serf's devotion has already been quoted; and such cases were not rare. In _Childhood_ mention is made of the old housekeeper, Praskóvya Isáyevna, who was completely devoted to the welfare of the family, and Tolstoy says: 'All that I there wrote about her was actual truth.'

Here is another example illustrating both kindly toleration of minor offences committed by a serf, and the family affection which sweetened life:

My pleasantest recollections of my father are of his sitting with
grandmother on the sofa, helping her to play Patience. My father
was polite and tender with every one, but to my grandmother he was
always particularly tenderly submissive. They used to sit--Grandma
playing Patience, and from time to time taking pinches from a
gold snuff-box. My aunts sit in arm-chairs, and one of them reads
aloud. We children come in to say good-night, and sometimes sit
there. We always take leave of Grandma and our aunts by kissing
their hands. I remember once, in the middle of a game of Patience
and of the reading, my father interrupts my aunt, points to a
looking-glass and whispers something. We all look in the same
direction. It was the footman Tíkhon, who (knowing that my father
was in the drawing-room) was going into the study to take some
tobacco from a big leather folding tobacco-pouch. My father sees
him in the looking-glass, and notices his figure carefully stepping
on tip-toe. My aunts laugh. Grandmama for a long time does not
understand, but when she does, she too smiles cheerfully. I am
enchanted by my father's kindness, and on taking leave of him kiss
his white muscular hand with special tenderness.

An important feature of the life in which Tolstoy grew up was furnished by the half-crazy saints who swarmed in Russia in those days, and are still occasionally to be met with. Readers of _Childhood_ will remember Grísha, an admirable specimen of that class, about whom Tolstoy makes the following characteristic note in his memoirs:

Grísha is an invented character. We had many of these half-crazy
saints at our house, and I was taught to regard them with profound
respect, for which I am deeply grateful to those who brought me
up. If there were some among them who were insincere, or who
experienced periods of weakness and insincerity, yet the aim of
their life, though practically absurd, was so lofty that I am glad
I learned in childhood unconsciously to understand the height of
their achievement. They accomplished what Marcus Aurelius speaks
of when he says: 'There is nothing higher than to endure contempt
for one's good life.' So harmful and so unavoidable is the desire
for human glory which always contaminates good deeds, that one
cannot but sympathise with the effort not merely to avoid praise,
but even to evoke contempt. Such a character was Márya Gerásimovna,
my sister's godmother, and the semi-idiot Evdokímoushka, and some
others in our house.

How deeply these early impressions were engraved on Tolstoy's mind is obvious from his earliest as well as his latest writings. Take, for instance, the lines from _Childhood_ referring to Grísha's prayer overheard by the children.

Much water has flowed away since then, many recollections of the
past have lost for me their meaning and become blurred fancies;
even the pilgrim Grísha himself has long since finished his last
pilgrimage; but the impression he produced on me and the feeling he
evoked, will never die out of my memory.

In Tolstoy's later life we shall again and again find this medieval note recurring (with whatever of truth or falsity it contains), and the assertion that it is not the usefulness or uselessness of a man's life that matters, so much as his self-abnegation and the humility of his soul.

To complete the picture of Tolstoy's early boyhood at Yásnaya Polyána, we must think of him as interested in his father's dogs and horses and hunting (in _Childhood_ he tells the true story of how he hunted his first hare), and also in the games and masquerades with which the family and visitors, as well as the servants, amused themselves, especially at New Year.

In spite of his sensitive introspective nature, Tolstoy's childhood was a happy one; and to it he always looks back with pleasure. He speaks of 'that splendid, innocent, joyful, poetic period of childhood, up to fourteen,' and he tells us that the impressions of early childhood, preserved in one's memory, grow in some unfathomable depth of the soul, like seeds thrown on good ground, till after many years they thrust their bright, green shoots into God's world.

1837

When Tolstoy was eight years old the family moved to Moscow for his elder brothers' education. The following summer they lost their father, who, having gone to Toúla on business, fell down in the street on his way to visit his friend Temeshóf, and died of apoplexy. What money he had with him was stolen, but some unnegotiable bonds were brought back to the Tolstoys in Moscow by an unknown beggar. The funeral took place at Yásnaya Polyána; and Leo, who did not attend it, long fancied that his father was not really dead. Looking at the faces of strangers in the streets of Moscow, he felt almost certain he might at any moment meet him alive again.

This event brought the problems of life and death vividly to the boy's mind, and nine months later the impression was intensified by the death of his grandmother, who never recovered from the shock of her son's death. Hers was the first death Tolstoy witnessed, and he never forgot the horror he felt when, as she lay dying of dropsy, he was admitted to kiss her swollen white hand and saw her, dressed in white, lying motionless on a high white bed. But he says:

I remember that new jackets of black material, braided with white,
were made for all of us. It was dreadful to see the undertakers'
men hanging about near the house, and then bringing in the coffin,
with its lid covered with glazed brocade, and my grandmother's
stern face, with its Roman nose, and her white cap and the white
kerchief on her neck, lying high in the coffin on the table; and
it was sad to see the tears of our aunts and of Páshenka; but yet
the new braided jackets and the soothing attitude adopted towards
us by those around, gratified us.... I remember how pleasant it
was to me to overhear during the funeral the conversation of some
gossiping female guests, who said, 'Complete orphans; their father
only lately dead, and now the grandmother gone too.'

Some time after this, an event occurred that is recorded on the first page of Tolstoy's _Confession_:

I remember how, when I was about eleven, a boy Vladímir Milútin
(long since dead), a Grammar School pupil, visited us one Sunday
and announced as the latest novelty a discovery made at his School.
The discovery was that there is no God, and all that we are taught
about Him is a mere invention. I remember how interested my elder
brothers were in this news. They called me to their council and
we all, I remember, became animated, and accepted the news as
something very interesting and fully possible.

Various stories have been preserved relating to Tolstoy's boyhood, and some of them are sufficiently characteristic to be worth repeating.

One incident which made a strong impression on the lad, keenly sensitive as he always was to any shade of injustice, was the following:

Soon after the death of their father and grandmother, the orphan Tolstoys, then living in rather straitened circumstances (owing to the property being left in trust), were invited to a Christmas Tree at the house of an acquaintance, and the young Princes Gortchakóf, nephews of the then Minister of War, were also among the guests. All the children received presents; but whereas the Gortchakófs had expensive ones, the Tolstoys, to their annoyance, received cheap common ones.

Another occurrence that clung to his recollection through life, was the friendly welcome they received one day when they made their way uninvited into a private garden in Moscow; and the sad disappointment they experienced when, returning a few days later unaccompanied by a pretty and attractive girl who had been with them on the former occasion, they were coldly informed that it was private ground, not open to the public.

Other stories, told by Tolstoy himself or by the family, illustrate his impulsive, imaginative, strenuous and rather erratic nature at this period.

When he was about seven or eight years old he had an ardent desire to fly, and persuaded himself that it was possible to do so. It was only necessary to sit down tight on your heels, clasping your arms firmly round your knees, and the tighter you held them the higher you would fly. As Tolstoy was always ardent to put his beliefs into practice, it is not very surprising that one day, soon after the family had moved to Moscow, he stayed behind in the class-room when he should have come down to dinner, and climbing out on the window-sill, some six yards from the ground, threw himself out. He was picked up unconscious. The ill results of his fall were fortunately confined to a slight concussion of the brain; and after sleeping for eighteen hours on end he woke up again quite well.

It would be a mistake to take his story, _Childhood_, as strictly autobiographical; but it contains many passages which one knows from other sources to be true of his own life, and one such is the passage in which (speaking in the character of Nikólenka) he says:

I knew very well that I was plain, and therefore every reference
to my appearance was painfully offensive to me.... Moments of
despair frequently came over me: I imagined that there could be no
happiness on earth for a man with so broad a nose, such thick lips,
and such small grey eyes as mine. I asked God to perform a miracle
and change me into a handsome boy, and all I then had and all I
could ever possess in the future, I would have given for a handsome
face.

In fact, his personal appearance caused the sensitive lad much concern, but his efforts to improve it were unsuccessful. On one occasion he clipped his eyebrows, and the unsatisfactory results of that operation occasioned him great grief.

He records in his Reminiscences the following incident, which certainly intensified his lifelong antipathy to corporal punishment:

I do not remember for what, but for something quite undeserving of
punishment, St. Thomas [the resident French tutor who succeeded
Rössel] first locked me into a room, and secondly threatened to
flog me. I thereupon experienced a dreadful feeling of anger
indignation and disgust, not only towards St. Thomas himself, but
towards the violence with which I was threatened.

When quite a small boy he conceived an attachment for the nine-year-old daughter of his father's friend, Islényef, and being jealous of her for daring to talk to others, he angrily pushed her off a balcony, with the result that she limped for a long time afterwards. A quarter of a century later, when he married this lady's daughter, his mother-in-law used laughingly to remind him of the incident, and say, 'Evidently you pushed me off the balcony in my childhood that you might marry my daughter afterwards!'

His sister relates that once when they were driving in a troika (_i.e._ three horses abreast) to Yásnaya, Leo got down during a break in the journey and went forward on foot. When the carriage started again and began to overtake him he took to running, and when the horses went faster he also increased his speed, racing as hard as he could. He was not overtaken till he had gone about two miles and was completely tired out. He was lifted back into the carriage gasping for breath, perspiring and quite exhausted. Any one not endowed with the remarkable physical vigour that, in spite of frequent attacks of ill-health, has characterised Tolstoy through life, would probably have done themselves serious injury had they taxed their vital resources as recklessly as he often did.

All accounts agree in representing him as an original and odd little fellow, unwilling to do things like other people. He would for instance enter a drawing-room and, carefully placing his feet together and bending his head, would make his bow backwards, saluting each of the company in turn.

Two incidents are recorded relating to the love of riding which has remained a characteristic of his through life.

When his brothers were sent to a riding-school, Leo (in spite of his father's assurances and those of the riding-master that he was too small to begin and would tumble off) also obtained permission to learn to ride. At his first lesson he duly tumbled off, but begged to be replaced in the saddle; and he did not fall off again, but became an expert horseman. In one of the short stories he wrote many years later for the use of school-children, he tells how he once wished to ride the old horse Raven after his brothers had each had a turn on it; and how Raven being too tired to move from the stables, he beat it till he broke his switch on its sides. He then demanded a stouter switch from the serf in charge, but the man replied:

'Ah, master, you have no pity! Why do you beat him? He is twenty
years old, and is tired out; he can hardly breathe. Why, for a
horse, he is as old as Timoféyitch [a very old peasant living at
the place]. You might as well get on Timoféyitch's back, and drive
him beyond his strength like that, with a switch. Would you feel no
pity for him?'

I thought of Timoféyitch, and hearkened to the man. I got off
the horse's back; and when I noticed how its steaming sides were
working, and how heavily it breathed through its nostrils, swishing
its thin tail, I understood how hard it was for it. Till then I
had thought that it was as happy as I was myself. And I felt so
sorry for Raven that I began to kiss his sweaty neck and to beg his
pardon for having beaten him.

Since then I have grown up, but I always have pity on horses, and
always remember Raven and Timoféyitch when I see horses ill-treated.

He does not appear to have been very good at his lessons, and himself somewhere mentions the dictum of a student who used to coach his brothers and himself, and said of their aptitude for learning:

'Sergéy both wishes and can, Dmítry wishes but can't' (this was
not true), 'and Leo neither wishes nor can.' (This, I think, was
perfectly true.)

On the other hand, St. Thomas, the French tutor already referred to (he figures in _Childhood_ as St. Jérôme), must have noticed the lad's capacity, for he used to say, '_Ce petit a une tête: c'est un petit Molière_' (This little one has a head: he is a little Molière).

1837

After the father's death the family property passed under the control of the Court of Wards, and expenses had to be cut down. It was therefore decided that, though the two elder brothers had to remain in Moscow for the sake of their education, the three younger children should return to Yásnaya Polyána, where living was cheaper, in charge of their much loved Aunty Tatiána. Their legal guardian, the Countess Alexandra ('Aline') Ilýnishna Osten-Saken, remained in Moscow with the elder boys.

This lady had made what seemed a brilliant marriage with the wealthy Count Osten-Saken, whose family was among the first in the Baltic Provinces; but her married life was a terrible one. Her husband went out of his mind and tried to kill her. While he was confined in an asylum, the Countess gave birth to a still-born child. To save her from this fresh shock, a girl born of a servant, the wife of a Court cook, was substituted for the still-born baby. This girl, Páshenka, lived with the Tolstoy family, and was already grown up when Tolstoy was quite a child. Subsequently the Countess Alexandra lived first with her parents and then with her brother, Tolstoy's father. Though she was a devotee of the Orthodox Russo-Greek Church of which Tolstoy eventually became so fierce an opponent, much in her character and conduct accords with the precepts laid down in his later writings; and it is evident that certain aspects of his understanding of the Christian character, which strike most Englishmen as peculiar, far from being invented out of his own head, are derived from a deeply-rooted Russian and family tradition. He tells us:

My aunt was a truly religious woman. Her favourite occupation
was reading the Lives of the Saints, conversing with pilgrims,
half-crazy devotees, monks and nuns, of whom some always lived
in our house, while others only visited my aunt.... She was not
merely outwardly religious, keeping the fasts, praying much, and
associating with people of saintly life, but she herself lived
a truly Christian life, trying not only to avoid all luxury and
acceptance of service, but herself serving others as much as
possible. She never had any money, for she gave away all she had
to those who asked. A servant related to me how, during their life
in Moscow, my aunt used carefully on tip-toe to pass her sleeping
maid, when going to Matins, and used herself to perform all the
duties which it was in those days customary for a maid to perform.
In food and dress she was as simple and unexacting as can possibly
be imagined. Unpleasant as it is to me to mention it, I remember
from childhood a specific acid smell connected with my aunt,
probably due to negligence in her toilet: and this was the graceful
poetic Aline with beautiful blue eyes, who used to love reading and
copying French verses, who played on the harp, and always had great
success at the grandest balls! I remember how affectionate and kind
she always was, and this equally to the most important men and
women and to the nuns and pilgrims.

Tolstoy goes on to tell how pleasantly she bore the jests and teasing that her devotion to the priests brought upon her.

I remember her dear good-natured laugh, and her face shining with
pleasure. The religious feeling which filled her soul was evidently
so important to her, so much higher than anything else, that she
could not be angry or annoyed at anything, and could not attribute
to worldly matters the importance others attach to them.

1840

In the summer of 1839 the whole family assembled at Yásnaya Polyána. The next year, 1840, was a famine year. The crops were so poor that corn had to be bought to feed the serfs, and to raise funds for this purpose one of the Tolstoys' estates had to be sold. The supply of oats for the horses was stopped, and Tolstoy remembers how he and his brothers, pitying their ponies, secretly gathered oats for them in the peasants' fields, quite unconscious of the crime they were committing.

1841

In the autumn of that year the whole family moved to Moscow, returning to Yásnaya for the following summer. The next autumn their guardian, the kind good Countess Alexandra Osten-Saken, died in the Convent or 'Hermitage' founded by Óptin (a robber chief of the fourteenth century) in the Government of Kaloúga, to which she had retired.

After her death her sister, Pelagéya Ilýnishna Úshkof, became their guardian. She was the wife of a Kazán landowner. Aunty Tatiána and she were not on friendly terms; there was no open quarrel between them, but V. I. Úshkof (Pelagéya's husband) had been a suitor for Tatiána's hand in his youth, and had been refused. Pelagéya could not forgive her husband's old love for Tatiána.

The change of guardianship led to the removal of the family to Kazán, and to the children being separated from Aunty Tatiána, much to her grief.

The books which up to the age of fourteen, when he went to Kazán, had most influenced Tolstoy were, he tells us, the Story of Joseph from the Bible, the _Forty Thieves_ and _Prince Kamaralzaman_ from the _Arabian Nights_, various Russian folk-legends, Poúshkin's _Tales_ and his poem _Napoleon_, and _The Black Hen_ by Pogorélsky. The influence the story of Joseph had on him, he says, was 'immense.'

In his aptitude for abstract speculation, as in other respects, the boy was truly father to the man; and in a passage, certainly autobiographical, in _Boyhood_, he says:

It will hardly be believed what were the favourite and most common
subjects of my reflections in my boyhood--so incompatible were
they with my age and situation. But in my opinion incompatibility
between a man's position and his moral activity is the surest sign
of truth....

At one time the thought occurred to me that happiness does not
depend on external causes, but on our relation to them; and that
a man accustomed to bear suffering cannot be unhappy. To accustom
myself therefore to endurance, I would hold Tatíshef's dictionaries
in my outstretched hand for five minutes at a time, though it
caused me terrible pain; or I would go to the lumber room and flog
myself on my bare back with a cord so severely that tears started
to my eyes.

At another time suddenly remembering that death awaits me every
hour and every minute, I decided (wondering why people had not
understood this before) that man can only be happy by enjoying the
present and not thinking of the future; and for three days, under
the influence of this thought, I abandoned my lessons, and did
nothing but lie on my bed and enjoy myself, reading a novel and
eating honey-gingerbreads, on which I spent my last coins....

But no philosophic current swayed me so much as scepticism, which
at one time brought me to the verge of insanity. I imagined that
except myself no one and nothing existed in the world, that
objects are not objects but apparitions, appearing only when I pay
attention to them and disappearing as soon as I cease to think of
them. In a word, I coincided with Schelling in the conviction that
what exists is not objects, but only my relation to them. There
were moments in which under the influence of this fixed idea, I
reached such a stage of absurdity that I glanced quickly round
hoping to catch Nothingness by surprise, there where I was not.

The philosophical discoveries I made greatly flattered my vanity:
I often imagined myself a great man, discovering new truths for
the benefit of humanity, and I looked on other mortals with a
proud consciousness of my own dignity; yet, strange to say, when
I came in contact with these mortals I grew timid before each of
them. The higher I stood in my own opinion the less was I able to
show any consciousness of my own dignity before others, or even to
avoid being ashamed of every word or movement of my own--even the
simplest.

At the time of the move to Kazán, a serf lad of about his own age was presented to each of the young Tolstoys to attend on him. Alexis, the one given to Leo Tolstoy, remained in his service all his life, and died at Yásnaya a few years ago.

1841

For five and a half years, from the autumn of 1841 to the spring of 1847, the brothers lived at Kazán, returning each summer to Yásnaya for the vacation. They all entered Kazán University. The aunt who was their guardian, and with whom they lived the greater part of the time, was a kind but not particularly clever woman. Her house was the centre of much hospitality and gaiety.

1844

Leo Tolstoy prepared to enter the faculty of Oriental Languages, in which a knowledge of Arabic and Turco-Tartar was required. He worked hard, and matriculated in May 1844 before he was sixteen, passing in French (for which he received the mark 5+; 5 being in an ordinary way the highest mark, and the + indicating exceptional distinction), German, Arabic, and Turco-Tartar very well, and in English, Logic, Mathematics and Russian Literature, well; but he did indifferently in Latin, and failed completely in History and Geography, getting the lowest mark, a 1, for each of them. Of History he says, 'I knew nothing,' and of Geography 'still less'; adding, 'I was asked to name the French seaports, but I could not name a single one.' At the end of the summer vacation he was admitted for re-examination in the subjects in which he had failed, and passed successfully.

1844-1845

The winter season when Tolstoy, as a student at the University and a young man of good position, entered Kazán society, was a particularly gay one. He attended many balls, given by the Governor of the Province, by the _Maréchal de la Noblesse_, and by private people, as well as many masquerades, concerts, tableaux-vivants, and private theatricals. He is still remembered by old inhabitants as having been 'present at all the balls, soirées, and aristocratic parties, a welcome guest everywhere, and always dancing, but, far from being a ladies' man, he was distinguished by a strange awkwardness and shyness.' At Carnival time in 1845 he and his brother Sergius took parts in two plays given for some charitable object. His performance was a great success.

As to the nature of Kazán society and of his surroundings there, accounts are contradictory. On the one hand, we have his own statement that (imitating his brother Sergius in this as in other matters) he became 'depraved.' Birukóf, too, speaks of 'the detestable surroundings of Tolstoy's life in Kazán,' and another writer, Zagóskin, a fellow-student of Tolstoy's at the University, says that the surroundings in which the latter moved were demoralising and must have been repellent to him. On the other hand, on seeing Zagóskin's remarks, Tolstoy (in whom there is often observable a strong spirit of contradiction) replied:

I did not feel any repulsion, but was very glad to enjoy myself
in Kazán society, which was then very good. I am on the contrary
thankful to fate that I passed my first youth in an environment
where a young man could be young without touching problems
beyond his grasp, and that I lived a life which, though idle and
luxurious, was yet not evil.

The explanation of these contradictions, no doubt, is that the family circle in which Tolstoy lived was an affectionate one, and that he himself not only enjoyed his life, but formed friendships and made efforts at which in later years he looked back with satisfaction. Yet there was assuredly much in his life and in the life around him which (except when others were severe on it) he recalled with grave disapproval, a disapproval he has plainly expressed in his _Confession_.

To come as near as we may to the truth, we must allow for the personal equation which, in Tolstoy's case, is violent and fluctuating.

With constant amusements going on around him, it is not surprising that at the end of his first University year he failed in his examinations. The failure does not however appear to have been entirely his fault, for he tells us:

Ivanóf, Professor of Russian History, prevented me from passing
to the second course (though I had not missed a single lecture
and knew Russian History quite well) because he had quarrelled
with my family. The same Professor also gave me the lowest mark--a
'one'--for German, though I knew the language incomparably better
than any student in our division.

1845

Instead of remaining for a second year in the first course of Oriental Languages, Tolstoy preferred to leave that faculty, and in August 1845 he entered the faculty of Law. During the first months of this new course he hardly studied at all, throwing himself more than ever into the gay life of Kazán society. Before midwinter however he began for the first time, as he tells us, 'to study seriously, and I even found a certain pleasure in so doing.' Comparative Jurisprudence and Criminal Law interested him, and his attention was especially arrested by a discussion on Capital Punishment. Meyer, Professor of Civil Law, set him a task which quite absorbed him; it was the comparison of Montesquieu's _Esprit des Lois_ with Catherine the Second's _Great Nakaz_. The conclusion to which he came was, that in Catherine's _Nakaz_ one finds Montesquieu's Liberal ideas mixed with the expression of Catherine's own despotism and vanity, and that the _Nakaz_ brought more fame to Catherine than good to Russia.

1846

He passed his examinations successfully in May 1846, and was duly admitted to the second year's course of Jurisprudence. Some time previously Tolstoy and another student had disputed which of them had the better memory, and to test this, each of them learnt by heart the reply to one examination question in History. Tolstoy's task was to learn the life of Mazeppa, and as luck would have it that was just the question he happened to draw at his examination, so that he naturally obtained a 5, the highest mark.

From the autumn of 1846 the three brothers, Sergius Demetrius and Leo, ceased to live at their aunt's, and settled in a flat of their own, consisting of five rooms.

A fellow-student, Nazáryef, has given us his impression of Tolstoy as a student. He says:

I kept clear of the Count, who from our first meeting repelled me
by his assumption of coldness, his bristly hair and the piercing
expression of his half-closed eyes. I had never met a young man
with such a strange and, to me, incomprehensible air of importance
and self-satisfaction....

At first I seldom met the Count, who in spite of his awkwardness
and bashfulness had joined the small group of so-called
'aristocrats.' He hardly replied to my greetings, as if wishing to
intimate that even here we were far from being equals, since he
drove up with a fast trotter and I came on foot....

It so happened that Nazáryef and Tolstoy were both late for a lecture on History one day, and were incarcerated together by order of the Inspector.

One gathers that Tolstoy was in those days particularly careful of his personal appearance, his clothes indicating his aristocratic pretensions. But though externally the Tolstoy of 1846 differed greatly from the Tolstoy of forty years later, his conversation ran on much the same lines as in later life, and was uttered with the intensity of conviction and the flashes of dry humour which have since made even the most didactic of his writings so readable.

Their conversation in their place of confinement having led to some mention of Lérmontof's poem, _The Demon_, Tolstoy took occasion to speak ironically of verse generally, and then, noticing a volume his companion had of Karamzín's _History of Russia_, he

attacked History as the dullest and almost the most useless of
subjects. A collection of fables and useless details, sprinkled
with a mass of unnecessary figures and proper names.... Who wants
to know that the second marriage of John the Terrible, with
Temrúk's daughter, took place on 21st August 1562; and his fourth
marriage, with Anna Alexéyevna Koltórsky, in 1572? Yet they expect
me to grind all this, and if I don't, the examiner gives me a 'one.'

Later on, says Nazáryef, 'the, to me, irresistible force of Tolstoy's doubts fell upon the University, and on University teaching in general. The phrase, "The Temple of Science," was constantly on his lips. Remaining perfectly serious himself, he portrayed our professors in such a comical light that, in spite of all my efforts to appear indifferent, I laughed like one possessed.... "Yet," said Tolstoy, "we both had a right to expect that we should leave this temple useful men, equipped with knowledge. But what shall we really carry away from the University?... What shall we be good for, and to whom shall we be necessary?"

Nazáryef says that in spite of the feeling half of dislike, half of perplexity, that Tolstoy evoked in him, he well remembers that he was dimly conscious of something remarkable, exceptional, and at the same time inexplicable, about him.

From the educational articles Tolstoy wrote sixteen years later, we know that he disapproved of examinations, of the restricted groove of studies marked out for the students in each faculty, and of the system which made it necessary for the professors to deliver original lectures of their own, and obliged the students to listen to those lectures and to study them, however incompetent the professors might be.

1847

The fact that his brother Sergius had finished his studies and was leaving, strengthened Tolstoy's dissatisfaction with the University; and finally, without waiting for the May examinations at which he might have qualified for the third year's course, we find him, soon after Easter 1847, applying to have his name removed from the University roll 'on account of ill-health and family affairs.' He really had been in hospital in March, but the plea of ill-health was a mere excuse.

His failure to take a degree was a source of great annoyance and disappointment to him, and it must not be supposed that he left Kazán with any idea of taking life easily or neglecting further study.

From the time he was a boy he had kept a diary of every little sin he had committed, and especially of any offence against the Seventh Commandment, in order that he might repent, and if possible refrain for the future, and his diary shows how full he was at this time of strenuous resolutions. During the last year of his life at Kazán he made close friends with a student named Dyákof (the Nehlúdof of _Boyhood_), and under his influence had developed

an ecstatic worship of the ideal of virtue, and the conviction
that it is man's destiny continually to perfect himself. To put
all mankind right and to destroy all human vices and misfortunes,
appeared a matter that could well be accomplished. It seemed quite
easy and simple to put oneself right, to acquire all the virtues,
and to be happy.

Here are some rules he set himself at that time:

1. To fulfil what I set myself, despite all obstacles.

2. To fulfil well what I do undertake.

3. Never to refer to a book for what I have forgotten, but always
to try to recall it to mind myself.

4. Always to make my mind work with its utmost power.

5. Always to read and think aloud.

6. Not to be ashamed of telling people who interrupt me, that they
are hindering me: letting them first feel it, but (if they do not
understand) telling them, with an apology.

Deciding to settle at Yásnaya for two years, he drew up a list of studies he intended to pursue for his own mental development, and to qualify for a University degree; and this list was, as the reader will see, appalling in its scope.

1. To study the whole course of law necessary to get my degree.

2. To study practical medicine, and to some extent its theory also.

3. To study: French, Russian, German, English, Italian, and Latin.

4. To study agriculture, theoretically and practically.

5. To study History, Geography, and Statistics.

6. To study Mathematics (the High School course).

7. To write my [University] thesis.

8. To reach the highest perfection I can in music and painting.

9. To write down rules (for my conduct).

10. To acquire some knowledge of the natural sciences, and,

11. To write essays on all the subjects I study.

Such rules and resolutions abound in Tolstoy's Diary. After failing to act up to them, he again and again gathers his energies and maps out for himself plans of life and courses of study sufficient to tax the energies of an intellectual giant.

As to his religious opinions at this time, he tells us:

I was baptized and brought up in the Orthodox Christian faith. I
was taught it in childhood and all through my boyhood and youth.
But before I left the University, in my second year, at the age
of eighteen, I no longer believed anything I had been taught.
(_Confession._)

His Diary nevertheless shows that he prayed frequently and earnestly; the fact no doubt being, that though intellectually he discarded the Orthodox Russo-Greek Church, in times of trouble or distress he instinctively appealed to God for help. His opinions were wavering and immature, as he himself tells us in another passage:

The religious beliefs taught me in childhood disappeared... and as
from the time I was fifteen I began to read philosophic works, my
rejection of those beliefs very soon became a conscious one. From
the age of sixteen I ceased going to Church and fasting of my own
accord. I did not believe what had been taught me from childhood,
but I believed in something. What it was I believed in, I could not
at all have said. I believed in a God, or rather I did not deny
God; but I could not have said what sort of God. Neither did I deny
Christ and his teaching, but what his teaching consisted in I
could also not have said.

Looking back on that time now, I see clearly that my faith--my only
real faith, that which apart from my animal instincts gave impulse
to my life--was a belief in perfecting oneself. But in what this
perfecting consisted and what its object was, I could not have
said. I tried to perfect myself mentally--I studied everything
I could: anything life threw in my way; I tried to perfect my
will, I drew up rules which I tried to follow; I perfected myself
physically, cultivating my strength and agility by all sorts of
exercises and accustoming myself to endurance and patience by all
kinds of privations. And all this I considered to be perfecting
myself. The beginning of it all was, of course, moral perfecting;
but that was soon replaced by perfecting in general: by the desire
to be better, not in one's own eyes or those of God, but in the
eyes of other people. And very soon this effort again changed
into a desire to be stronger than others: to be more famous, more
important and richer than others. (_Confession._)

When speaking of Tolstoy's relations with women, it should be borne in mind that incontinence for young men was then considered so natural that few of them in his position would have felt any serious qualms of conscience about such visits to houses of ill-fame as he lets us know that he began to pay at this time. His brother Dmítry however led a chaste life, and alternating with gross lapses of conduct, we find Leo noting down for his own guidance such resolutions as the following:

To regard the society of women as a necessary unpleasantness of
social life, and to keep away from them as much as possible.
From whom indeed do we get sensuality, effeminacy, frivolity in
everything, and many other vices, if not from women? Whose fault is
it, if not women's, that we lose our innate qualities of boldness,
resolution, reasonableness, justice, etc.? Women are more receptive
than men, therefore in virtuous ages women were better than we; but
in the present depraved and vicious age they are worse than we are.

During his years at the University, Tolstoy saw much of his brother Dmítry, of whom he says:

I remember also at the University that when my elder brother
Dmítry, suddenly in the passionate way natural to him devoted
himself to religion and began to attend all the Church services,
to fast, and to lead a pure and moral life, we all, and even our
elders, unceasingly held him up to ridicule and called him, for
some unknown reason, 'Noah.' I remember that Moúsin-Poúshkin (then
Curator of Kazán University), when inviting us to a dance at his
house, ironically remonstrated with my brother, who had declined
the invitation, and used the argument that even David danced before
the Ark. I sympathised with these jokes my elders made, and deduced
from them the conclusion that though it is necessary to learn the
catechism and go to church, one must not take such things too
seriously. (_Confession._)

Again we read of this brother:

His peculiarities became manifest, and are impressed on my mind
from the time of our life at Kazán. Formerly in Moscow I remember
that he did not fall in love, as Seryózha and I did, and was not
fond of dancing or of military pageants, but studied well and
strenuously.... At Kazán I, who had always imitated Seryózha, began
to grow depraved.... Not only at Kazán, but even earlier, I used
to take pains about my appearance. I tried to be elegant, _comme
il faut_. There was no trace of anything of this kind in Mítenka.
I think he never suffered from the usual vices of youth; he was
always serious thoughtful pure and resolute, though hot-tempered,
and whatever he did, he did to the best of his ability.... He wrote
verses with great facility. I remember how admirably he translated
Schiller's _Der Jüngling am Bache_, but he did not devote himself
to this occupation.... He grew up associating little with others,
always--except in his moments of anger--quiet and serious. He was
tall, rather thin, and not very strong, with long, large hands and
round shoulders. I do not know how or by what he was attracted at
so early an age towards a religious life, but it began in the very
first year of his University career. His religious aspirations
naturally directed him to Church life, and he devoted himself to
this with his usual thoroughness.

In Mítenka there must have existed that valuable characteristic
which I believe my mother to have had, and which I knew in
Nikólenka, but of which I was altogether devoid--complete
indifference to other people's opinion about oneself. Until quite
lately (in old age) I have never been able to divest myself of
concern about people's opinion; but Mítenka was quite free from
this. I never remember on his face that restrained smile which
involuntarily appears when one is being praised. I always remember
his serious quiet sad, sometimes severe, almond-shaped hazel eyes.
Only in our Kazán days did we begin to pay particular attention to
him, and then merely because, while Seryózha and I attached great
importance to what was _comme il faut_--to externalities--he was
careless and untidy, and we condemned him for this.

We others, especially Seryózha, kept up acquaintance with our
aristocratic comrades and other young men. Mítenka on the contrary
selected out of all the students a piteous-looking, poor,
shabbily dressed youth, Poluboyárinof [which may be translated
Half-noble]--whom a humorous fellow-student of ours called
Polubezobédof [Half-dinnerless]--and consorted only with him, and
with him prepared for the examinations.... We brothers, and even
our aunt, looked down on Mítenka with a certain contempt for his
low tastes and associates; and the same attitude was adopted by our
frivolous comrades.