Chapter II: Childhood and Early Manhood (2)

After their University days were over, Tolstoy saw little of his brother Demetrius; so it will be convenient here to sacrifice chronological sequence and say what more there is to tell of the latter's life and death. The material is again supplied by Tolstoy's Reminiscences.

When we divided up the family property, according to custom the
estate where we lived, Yásnaya Polyána, was given to me. Seryózha,
as a lover of horses and according to his wish, received Pirogóvo,
where there was a stud. To Mítenka and Nikólenka were given the
two other estates: to Nikólenka, Nikolsky; to Mítenka, the Kursk
estate, Sher-batchóvka. I have kept a note of Mítenka's, showing
how he regarded the possession of serfs. The idea that it is
wrong, and that serfs ought to be liberated, was quite unknown in
our circle in the 'forties. The hereditary possession of serfs
seemed a necessary condition of life, and all that could be done
to prevent its being an evil, was to attend not only to their
material but also to their moral welfare. In this sense Mítenka
wrote very seriously naïvely and sincerely. Thinking he could not
do otherwise, he, a lad of twenty, when he left the University
took it upon himself to direct the morality of hundreds of peasant
families, and to do this (as Gógol recommended in his _Letters to a
Landowner_) by threats of punishments and by punishments.... But,
besides this duty to his serfs, there was another duty which at
that time it seemed impossible not to fulfil: namely, Military or
Civil service. And Mítenka decided to enter the Civil Service.

Tolstoy proceeds to tell how his brother, desiring to be useful to his country, chose legislation as his speciality, and going to Petersburg astonished the Head of the Department as well as certain aristocratic acquaintances by asking where he could find a place in which he could be _useful_. The friend to whom he went for advice, regarded the service of the State merely as a means of satisfying ambition, and 'such a question had probably never occurred to him before.' Eventually we find Demetrius returning home discouraged, and taking up some local work. All this, to some extent, helps us to understand Leo Tolstoy's sceptical attitude towards the institution of Government, and his strong belief that men in Government service are solely actuated by selfish motives.

Tolstoy continues:

After we had both left the University, I lost sight of him. I
know he lived the same severe, abstemious life, knowing neither
wine tobacco nor, above all, women, till he was twenty-six, which
was very rare in those days. I know also that he associated with
monks and pilgrims.... I think I was already in the Caucasus when
an extraordinary change took place. He suddenly took to drinking
smoking wasting money and going with women. How it happened I do
not know; I did not see him at the time. I only know that his
seducer was a thoroughly immoral man of very attractive appearance,
the youngest son of Islényef [an uncle of the lady Leo Tolstoy
subsequently married].

In this life Mítenka remained the same serious religious man he
was in everything. He ransomed from the brothel a prostitute named
Másha, who was the first woman he knew, and took her into his
house. But this life did not last long. I believe it was less the
vicious and unhealthy life he led for some months in Moscow, than
his mental struggle and his qualms of conscience, that suddenly
destroyed his powerful organism. He became consumptive, went to
the country, was doctored in the provincial town, and took to his
bed in Orél, where I saw him for the last time just after the
Crimean war. He was in a dreadful state of emaciation: one could
even see how his enormous hand joined on to the two bones of his
lower arm; his face was all eyes, and they were still the same
beautiful serious eyes, with a penetrating expression of inquiry
in them. He was constantly coughing and spitting, but was loth to
die, and reluctant to believe he was dying. Poor pockmarked Másha,
whom he had rescued, was with him and nursed him. In my presence,
at his own wish, a wonder-working icon was brought. I remember the
expression of his face when he prayed to it.... He died a few days
later!

Students of the didactic writings of Tolstoy's later years will notice how closely his injunctions to a man to keep to the first woman, whoever she be, with whom he has had intimate relations, correspond with the line actually followed by his brother Demetrius.

When Tolstoy left the University, however, these things were still unthought of. Let us, before returning to the events of his own life at that time, notice some books which he read between the ages of fourteen and twenty-one. They included:

The Sermon on the Mount from St. Matthew's Gospel,

Rousseau's _Confession_ and _Émile_, and
Dickens's _David Copperfield_,

which all had an 'immense' influence on him.

In another category came works which he says had 'very great' influence. These were:

Rousseau's _Nouvelle Héloïse_,
Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_,
Poúshkin's _Eugene Onégin_,
Schiller's _The Robbers_,
Gógol's _Dead Souls_,
Tourgénef's _A Sportsman's Sketches_,
Drouzhínin's _Pólenka Sax_,
Grigoróvitch's _Antón Goremýka_, and the chapter _Tamán_ from
Lérmontof's _A Hero of Our Times_.

In a third category he mentions some of Gógol's Shorter Stories, and Prescott's _Conquest of Mexico_, as having had 'great' influence.

In these works one finds many ideas which have been congenial to Tolstoy throughout his life, and his adhesion to which has only become firmer with age. In illustration of this, take a couple of passages from Dickens which many readers may have passed without much attention, but which to Tolstoy represented the absolute truth of the matters they touch on. David Copperfield says of Parliament:

...I considered myself reasonably entitled to escape from the
dreary debates. One joyful night, therefore, I noted down the music
of the parliamentary bagpipes for the last time, and I have never
heard it since; though I still recognise the old drone in the
newspapers without any substantial variation (except, perhaps, that
there is more of it) all the livelong session.

To most Englishmen with memories of Pym and Hampden, or personal knowledge of the lives of men who have devoted themselves disinterestedly to public affairs, Parliamentary or local, Dickens's sneer at Parliament seems but a paradox or a joke; but to Tolstoy, with his inherited dislike of Government, this testimony from a great English writer (who had served as a Parliamentary reporter) seemed irrefutable evidence of the futility of Parliaments.

Take, again, a passage in which Dickens hits a nail adroitly on the head:

Mr. Micawber had a relish in this formal piling up of words, which,
however ludicrously displayed in his case, was, I must say, not
at all peculiar to him. I have observed it, in the course of my
life, in numbers of men. It seems to me to be a general rule. In
the taking of legal oaths, for instance, deponents seem to enjoy
themselves mightily when they come to several grand words in
succession, for the expression of one idea--as, that they utterly
detest, abominate, and abjure, and so forth--and the old anathemas
were made relishing on the same principle. We talk about the
tyranny of words, but we like to tyrannise over them too. We are
fond of having a large superfluous establishment of words to wait
upon us on great occasions; we think it looks important, and sounds
well. As we are not particular about the meaning of our liveries on
State occasions, if they be but fine and numerous enough, so the
meaning or necessity of our words is a secondary consideration, if
there be but a great parade of them.

No modern writer has ever more carefully eschewed the practice Dickens here attacks than Tolstoy has done throughout his career. Indeed, he is far stricter than Dickens in this respect.

But much more important than the influence of Dickens was that of Rousseau, of whom Tolstoy once remarked:

I have read the whole of Rousseau--all his twenty volumes,
including his _Dictionary of Music_. I was more than enthusiastic
about him, I worshipped him. At the age of fifteen I wore a
medallion portrait of him next my body instead of the Orthodox
cross. Many of his pages are so akin to me that it seems to me that
I must have written them myself.

Another writer who influenced Tolstoy, though to a very much smaller extent, was Voltaire, of whom he says:

I also remember that I read Voltaire when I was very young, and his
ridicule (of religion) not only did not shock me, but amused me
very much.

Everything Tolstoy has done in his life he has done with intensity; and that this applies to the way in which he read books in his youth, is shown by the fact that we find him as an old man, in 1898, in _What is Art?_ according the highest praise to books he had read before he was twenty-one, or even before he was fourteen.

It was in the spring of 1847 that Tolstoy, who was not yet nineteen, returned to his estate of Yásnaya Polyána, to live with his dear Aunty Tatiána; to 'perfect' himself, to study, to manage his estate, and to improve the condition of his serfs. The last part of this programme, at any rate, was not destined to have much success. Though one must never treat Tolstoy's fiction as strictly autobiographical, yet _A Squire's Morning_ gives a very fair idea of his own efforts to improve the lot of his serfs, and of the difficulties and failures he encountered in the course of that attempt. In that story Prince Nehlúdof decides to leave the University and settle in the country, and writes to his aunt:

As I already wrote you, I found affairs in indescribable disorder.
Wishing to put them right, I discovered that the chief evil is the
truly pitiable, wretched condition of the serfs, and this is an
evil that can only be remedied by work and patience. If you could
but see two of my serfs, David and Iván, and the life they and
their families lead, I am sure the sight of these two poor wretches
would convince you more than all I can say in explanation of my
intention.

Is it not my plain and sacred duty to care for the welfare of
these seven hundred people for whom I must account to God? Will it
not be a sin if, following plans of pleasure or ambition, I abandon
them to the caprice of coarse Elders and stewards? And why should
I seek in any other sphere opportunities of being useful and doing
good, when I have before me such a noble brilliant and intimate
duty?

Not only is this letter just such as Tolstoy himself may have written, but the difficulties Nehlúdof encounters when he tries to move his peasants from the ruts to which generations of serfdom had accustomed them, are just those Tolstoy himself met with: the suspicion shown by the serfs towards any fresh interference on the part of the master, and the fact that ways to which a community have grown accustomed are not easily changed by the sudden effort of a well-intentioned but inexperienced proprietor.

After spending the summer of 1847 at Yásnaya, Tolstoy went to Petersburg, where we find him settled in autumn; and early next year he entered for examination at the University of that city.

1848

On the 13th of the following February he wrote to his brother Sergius:

I write you this letter from Petersburg, where I intend to remain
_for ever_.... I have decided to stay here for my examinations and
then to enter the service....

In brief, I must say that Petersburg life has a great and food
influence on me: it accustoms me to activity and supplies the place
of a fixed table of occupations. Somehow one cannot be idle; every
one is occupied and active; one cannot find a man with whom one
could lead an aimless life, and one can't do it alone....

I know you will not believe that I have changed, but will say,
'It's already the twentieth time, and nothing comes of you--the
emptiest of fellows.' No, I have now altered in quite a new way. I
used to say to myself: 'Now I will change,' but at last I see that
I _have_ changed, and I say, 'I have changed.'

Above all, I am now quite convinced that one cannot live by
theorising and philosophising, but must live positively, _i.e._
must be a practical man. That is a great step in advance and a
great change; it never happened to me before. If one is young and
wishes to live, there is no place in Russia but Petersburg for
it....

On the 1st of May he wrote again to his brother, in a very different strain:

Seryózha! I think you already say I am 'the emptiest of fellows,'
and it is true. God knows what I have done! I came to Petersburg
without any reason, and have done nothing useful here, but have
spent heaps of money and got into debt. Stupid! Insufferably
stupid! You can't believe how it torments me. Above all, the
_debts_, which I _must_ pay _as soon as possible_, because if I
don't pay them soon, besides losing the money, I shall lose my
reputation.... I know you will cry out; but what's to be done?
One commits such folly once in a lifetime. I have had to pay for
my freedom (there was no one to thrash me, that was my chief
misfortune) and for philosophising, and now I have paid for it.
Be so kind as to arrange to get me out of this false and horrid
position--penniless and in debt all round.

He goes on to mention that he had passed two examinations at the University, but that he had altered his mind, and now, instead of completing his examinations, wanted to 'enter the Horse Guards as a Junker.' (A Junker was a young man who volunteered for the army as a Cadet. Before receiving a commission, a Junker lived with the officers, while preparing to become one of them.)

God willing, I will amend and become a steady man at last, I
hope much from my service as a Junker, which will train me to
practical life, and _nolens-volens_ I shall have to earn the rank
of officer. With luck, _i.e._ if the Guards go into action, I may
get a commission even before the usual two years are up. The Guards
start for the front at the end of May. At present I can do nothing:
first, because I have no money (of which I shall not need much,
I fancy), and secondly, because my two birth-certificates are at
Yásnaya. Have them sent on as soon as possible.

Before long, Tolstoy was again writing to his brother:

In my last letter I wrote much nonsense, of which the chief item
was that I intended to enter the Horse Guards; I shall act on that
plan only in case I fail in my examinations, and if the war is a
serious one.

The war in question was Russia's share in quelling the Hungarian rebellion of 1849. Not a thought of the justice or otherwise of the cause seems at that time to have crossed the mind of him who in later life became so powerful an indicter of war.

This is Tolstoy's own summary, written many years later, of the period we are now dealing with:

It was very pleasant living in the country with Aunty Tatiána, but
an indefinite thirst for knowledge drew me away to a distance.
This was in 1848, and I was still uncertain what to undertake. In
Petersburg two roads were open to me. I could either enter the
army, to take part in the Hungarian campaign, or I could complete
my studies at the University, to enter the Civil Service. My
thirst for knowledge conquered my ambition, and I again began to
study. I even passed two examinations in Law, but then all my good
resolutions broke down. Spring came, and the charm of country life
again drew me back to my estate.

Of the two examinations he passed at this time he says:

In 1848 I went to pass the examinations for my degree at Petersburg
University, knowing literally nothing, and reading up during only
one week. I worked day and night; and passed with Honours in Civil
and Criminal Law.

But in spite of this success he did not take the remaining examinations, and returned to Yásnaya without having obtained a degree--finally abandoning the attempt to do so.

In later times, when Tolstoy's reputation was world-wide, critics often amused themselves by detecting inconsistencies in his conduct and questioning his sincerity. But the proof of his sincerity is writ large in the story of his life. Time after time, from the earliest pages of his Diary, we find him vehemently resolving never more to do certain things, but always to do other things, and again and again confessing in the greatest tribulation, that he had failed to carry out his intentions; yet in spite of everything he returns, and again returns, to his earliest ideals and gradually shapes his life into accord with them, and eventually forms habits which, when he first extolled them, appeared utterly beyond his reach. Not insincerity but impetuosity, retrieved by extraordinary tenacity of purpose, has always characterised him. It was the same with his thirst for knowledge as with his yet deeper thirst after righteousness. Often as he was swayed by the lures of life, each of those two great desires found its satisfaction at last.

The letters quoted above show some consciousness of the fact that there is a practical side to life not to be mastered by theorising; but the duty of learning by experience as well as by ratiocination is one Tolstoy has very seldom dwelt on, and never, I think, realised at all fully.

Another characteristic matter alluded to in these letters is the difficulty he found himself in for lack of his birth-certificates and other papers. Russia has long suffered from a superabundance of red tape, which contrasts strongly with the slipshod habits of its people, and promotes the hatred of officialism that is there so common. The fact that Tolstoy has on several occasions been put to great inconvenience for lack of certificates, which it was not in his nature methodically to keep in readiness, is a small matter, but it has probably had its share in increasing his strong dislike of governments.

From Petersburg he brought back with him to Yásnaya a gifted but drunken German musician named Rudolph, with whom he had chanced to make acquaintance, and whose talent he had discerned. For some time Tolstoy devoted himself passionately to music, acquiring sufficient skill on the piano to become an excellent and sympathetic accompanist. He was always very susceptible to the influence of music, and in music, as in literature, he had strong sympathies and antipathies. Rudolph supplies the principal figure in Tolstoy's story _Albert_, written several years later.

Aunt Tatiána, who had played the piano excellently in youth, but had quite given it up for nearly thirty years, and who was now fifty-three years of age, resumed its practice and, Tolstoy tells us, played duets with him, and often surprised him by the accuracy and beauty of her execution.

For the next three years he lived partly at Yásnaya and partly in Moscow, and led a life alternating between the asceticism of his brother Demetrius and the self-indulgence of his brother Sergius; with dissipation, hunting, gambling, and the society of gipsy-girl singers. These were among the wildest and most wasted years of his life; but even here we find him, in the summer of 1850, resuming his Diary with penitence and self-reproach, and drawing up a time-table of how his days are in future to be spent: estate management, bathing, diary-writing, music, dinner, rest, reading, bathing, and again estate business to close the day. This curriculum was, however, neglected. Gusts of passion again swept away his good resolutions.

1849

At this time he made his first attempt to start a school for the peasant children of Yásnaya; but it was closed again two years later when he was in pecuniary difficulties; and it was not till 1862 that he discovered that he had infringed the law by opening it without official permission.

In relation to women, Tolstoy's ideal was a regular and affectionate family life. Women were for him divided into two groups: those sacred ones who could be looked on as possible wives or sisters, and those who, like the gipsy singers, could be paid for and possessed for short periods. To try to wipe out by a money payment any obligation arising from intimate relations, seems to have been his fixed rule. His animal passions were very strong, and late in life I have heard him say that neither drinking, cards, smoking, nor any other bad habit, had been nearly so hard for him to overcome as his desire for women. But he never doubted that that desire was a bad one. To judge him fairly, it must be remembered how loose was the general tone of the society in which he lived, and that the advice given him at this critical time of his life by those who were his natural guides, was not that he should live a chaste life, but that he should attach himself to a woman of good social position. In his _Confession_ he tells us:

The kind aunt with whom I lived, herself the purest of beings,
always told me that there was nothing she so desired for me as
that I should have relations with a married woman: '_Rien ne forme
un jeune homme, comme une liaison avec une femme comme il faut_'
[Nothing so forms a young man, as an intimacy with a woman of
good breeding]. Another happiness she desired for me was that I
should become an aide-de-camp, and if possible aide-de-camp to the
Emperor. But the greatest happiness of all would be that I should
marry a very rich girl and become possessed of as many serfs as
possible.

We never find Tolstoy involved in any family scandal, or called on to fight a duel about women; but his Diary at this period contains many traces of his struggles and his falls; as when he writes:

Men whom I consider morally lower than myself, do evil better
than I.... I live an animal life, though not quite debauched. My
occupations are almost all abandoned, and I am greatly depressed in
spirit.

His pecuniary affairs became disordered, owing to his gambling and other bad habits, and towards the end of 1850 he thought of trying to earn money by taking on a contract to run the post-station at Toúla, which before railways were built was an undertaking of some importance. Varied however as Tolstoy's abilities unquestionably are, Nature never intended him to be a man of business, and this plan fortunately came to nothing.

1850-1851

The winter of 1850-51 he passed for the most part in Moscow, and as a foretaste of the simplification of life which was to be such a prominent feature of his later years, we find him writing to his aunt at Yásnaya: '_Je dîne à la maison avec des stchi et kasha dont je me contente parfaitement_' [I dine at home on cabbage soup and buckwheat porridge, with which I am quite contented]; and he goes on to say that he only awaits the preserves and home-made liqueurs (which she no doubt sent him) to have everything as he was accustomed to have it in the country.

We find Aunty Tatiána warning him against card-playing. Tolstoy replies in French:

[3]Tout ce que vous me dîtes au sujet de la perversité du jeu est
très vrai et me revient souvent à l'esprit. C'est pourquoi je crois
que je ne jouerai plus.... 'Je crois,' mais j'espère bientôt vous
dire pour sûr.

[3] All that you say about the perversity of play is very
true, and I often think about it, and that is why I believe
that I shall gamble no more.... 'I believe,' but I hope soon
to tell you for certain.

1851

In March 1851 he returned to Moscow after visiting Yásnaya, and he notes in his Diary that he went there with the treble aim of playing cards, getting married, and entering the Civil Service. Not one of these three objects was attained. He took an aversion to cards. For marriage he considered a conjunction of love, reason, and fate to be necessary, and none of these was present. As to entering the service, it was again the fact that he had not brought the necessary documents with him that barred the way.

In March he writes to Aunty Tatiána and says he believes it to be true that spring brings a moral renovation. It always does him good, and he is able to maintain his good intentions for some months. Winter is the season that causes him to go wrong.

Next came a period of religious humility: he fasted diligently and composed a sermon, which of course was never preached. He also tried unsuccessfully to write a gipsy story and an imitation of Sterne's _Sentimental Journey_.

This period of his life was brought to a close by the return from the Caucasus, on leave of absence, of his eldest brother Nicholas, who was by this time an artillery officer.

Anxious to economise and pay off the debts he had contracted at cards, especially one of Rs. 4000 to Ogaryóf, a gendarme officer, who owned a small estate not far from Yásnaya, Leo resolved to accompany his brother on the latter's return to the Caucasus. He entrusted his estate to the care of his brother-in-law (Mary's husband), who was to pay his debts and allow him only Rs. 500 (then equal to about £80) a year to live on, and he gave his word not to play cards any more.

Tolstoy had another reason for wishing to escape from his accustomed surroundings. His brother Sergius was very fond of the gipsy choirs, famous in Russia for their musical talent. These choirs used to visit Yásnaya, and Leo Tolstoy, who shared his brother's susceptibility to the fascinations of the gipsy girls, saw a means of safety in flight to the Caucasus.

Before closing this chapter, let us note the extraordinary freedom enjoyed by young men of Tolstoy's class in those days of serfdom. Economically, serfdom supplied them with means, at the expense of a class deprived of almost all rights and absolutely dependent on their owners. Even if a member of the aristocracy ruined himself, family interest or a prudent marriage often retrieved the position for him. Religious restraint counted for little, for side by side with superstition, scepticism was common among the educated. The standard of morals expected of a young man was elastic and ill-defined. No irksome sense of public duty pressed on his attention. Politics, in our sense of the word, were forbidden; and though he had to enter the State service (civil or military), this was regarded either as a way of making a career for himself, or as a mere formality.

The detachment from the real business of life in which young Russians grew up, and the comparative isolation in which they lived on their country estates, explain the extremely radical conclusions often arrived at by those of them who wished to make the world better. Chain a man to the heavily laden car of social progress, and he can only advance very slowly, though any advance he does accomplish represents much effort and is of practical importance. Detach him from that car, and he may easily and pleasantly fly away on the winds of speculation to the uttermost realm of the highest heaven, without its producing any immediately perceptible result on the lives of his fellow-men. What I mean is, that the less a man is involved in practical work, the easier and pleasanter it is for him to take up extreme positions; I do not mean to deny that activity in the realm of thought and feeling exerts an unseen yet potent influence on other minds, and ultimately on practical affairs.

A knowledge of the social surroundings in which Tolstoy grew up makes it easier to understand the doctrines he subsequently taught. It was partly because he grew up in a detached and irresponsible position that the state of his own mind and soul were to him so much more important than the immediate effect of his conduct on others, and the same cause led him to remain in ignorance of lessons every intelligent man of business among us learns of necessity.

His independent position made easier the formation of that state of mind free from intellectual prejudice which enabled him later on to examine the claims of the Church, of the Bible, of the economists, of governments, and the most firmly established manners and customs of society, untrammelled by the fear of shocking or hurting other people, though all the time his feelings were so sensitive that it has never been possible for him to doubt or question the goodness of those lines of conduct which he had admired and approved when in childhood he saw them practised by those near and dear to him.

Contrasting his moral attitude with that of a young Englishman anxious to do right in our day, I should say that Tolstoy had no adequate sense of being a responsible member of a complex community with the opinions and wishes of which it is necessary to reckon. On the contrary, his tendency was to recognise with extraordinary vividness a personal duty revealed by the working of his own conscience and intellect apart from any systematic study of the social state of which he was a member.

He thus came to see things in a way we do not see them, while he remained blind to some things with which we are quite familiar. That is one reason why he is so extraordinarily interesting: he puts things in a way no Englishman would ever dream of putting them, and yet we feel how near akin we of the Western twentieth-century world are to this nineteenth-century Russian noble, who has so much in common with the medieval saint and the Oriental fatalist; and this helps us to realise that all nations and classes of men are, indeed, of one blood.

Later on, in the sequel to this work, when we have to deal with Tolstoy's peaceful anarchism and his conviction that no external regulation of society is necessary, but that all men would naturally do right were they not hampered by man-made laws, it will be useful to bear in mind that his own strength grew through having to steer unaided through the stormy seas of passion, and from finding his own way to a haven the lights of which had first shone on him in childhood. Like the rest of mankind, he judges others by himself.

CHIEF AUTHORITIES FOR CHAPTER II

Birukof.

Behrs.

_Novy Mir._

_Education and Instruction_, and _On the Education of the People_, in vol. iv. of Tolstoy's collected works: Moscow, 1903.

_Confession._ Published by the _Svobodnoe Slovo_, Christchurch, 1901.

Prof. Zagoskin, _Stoudentcheskie gody gr. Tolstogo_, in _Istoritchesky Vestnik_: January 1894.

V. N. Nazaryef, _Zhizn i ludi bylogo vremeni_, in _Istoritchesky Vestnik_: November 1900.

Tolstoy's talk with Pogodin, quoted in Mihaylovsky's _Literary Recollections_: Petersburg, 1900.

_L. N. Tolstoy._ By E. Solovef: Petersburg, 1897.

Light is also thrown on this period by Tolstoy's _Childhood_, _Boyhood_, and _Youth_, _The Memoirs of a Billiard Marker_, _Two Hussars_, _A Squire's Morning_, and _Albert_ (which, however, are not autobiographies), as well as by stories included in Tolstoy's Readers for School-children--_The Old Horse_ and _How I Learned to Ride_.