Tolstoy the man

Front matter

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Contents

I. TOLSTOY TO-DAY ........ I

H. CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL LIFE ... 21

HI. THE LANDED PROPRIETOR 45

Chapter I Tolstoy To-day

Twenty years ago there came into the rationalistic atmosphere of a German college the influence of a Russian novel which meant much to a group of young men who had thought God out of existence and had buried Christianity with all other religious superstitions. While religion seemed dead around them, it still was living within them, and the call to an heroic expression of it in Tolstoy's " War and Peace " awakened long slumbering thoughts and new and vital desires.

There must be something innate in human nature which sends men upon pilgrimages, for the first wish which the students expressed while the joy of the new-found truth had not yet spent itself, was to go to Moscow and see and hear the man who had saved them from losing a precious possession, and who had given to them a new interpretation of life and of the Lifegiver.

The young men had time, but little money, so the journey had to be made on foot, the long, most interesting trip taking them through the heart of the Slavic world. When they knocked at the hospitable door of Count Tolstoy's house in Moscow they looked more like tramps than students, and the welcome from the servants and from some members of his family was such as to send the autumn chill of the unpicturesque entrance hall into their exalted feeling. When the Count himself opened the door of the livingroom, where the samovar sang and the fire crackled while the smoke of cigarettes was thick and seductive, there came with him a warm air and a warmer welcome. He was in the prime of life, at the height of his literary fame in Russia, and the larger world was beginning to grow conscious of him.

Our admiration of Tolstoy grew no less because of our close contact with him, and the spell by which he enthralled us has remained a valued and abiding possession to some of us. Neither life nor death seemed the same thing afterwards, although our minds were too immature fully to grasp his teaching and the life of pleasure was too alluring to put it off for the life of labor.

Three times this pilgrimage was made by me in maturer years, and each time the welcome was more cordial and the admission into Tolstoy's inner life more generous. These visits brought with them the privilege of meeting the men and women who see in Tolstoy not only an author and a famous man but their great teacher and the revealer of a new philosophy of life.

The winter of 1903 was spent in close relation with this circle, and while the bond with Tolstoy himself was less intimate, this was due to the fact that the news of his serious illness checked the desire of the artist and biographer to urge their presence upon him, and only after we heard that his condition had improved did we venture our request. " Come and bring N. with you," read the telegram which we received in answer to our letter. N. is a musician of note, and the feeling that through his playing Tolstoy would receive much pleasure made our going easier, for usually we felt that we gave nothing in return for the inspiration received.

To start from Moscow at midnight, to be locked in a train whose compartments are so hot that they can well serve the purpose of a Russian bath, to inhale cigarette smoke which everywhere makes the atmosphere stale and thick, is no great pleasure, especially as the train stops longer at the stations than it travels between them, and, being the only so-called fast train, is uncomfortably crowded. No air either enters or leaves the compartment, and when we reach our destination, and can really breathe the fresh, ozone-laden air, it is as exhilarating a moment as if we had stepped from a prison cell into freedom. The little depot is almost covered by snow, and after being wakened for a moment by the stopping of the train it sinks again into the deepest quiet. Here and there from among the white birches the rising smoke tells of some mujik's cabin in which the housewife has bestirred herself and has kindled the fire. The horse and sleigh of Countess Tolstoy are awaiting us in the station yard, and almost simultaneously we ask the coachman, " How is the Count ? " " Slava Bogu [Praise God], he is much better," answers the faithful servant, whose broad, good-natured face smiles at us from his wrappings of fur, which make him look like an overgrown infant ready to be carried away by its nurse. He remembers the Count's guests, and has a particular smile for those who know that Tolstoy's philosophy about money has not at all influenced his servants, who are just as eager for their tips (na tschay) as if they were living in the most materialistic atmosphere.

Swiftly we glided along through the increasing quiet ; the noise of the passing train had almost ceased, and its deep breathing grew fainter and fainter. From the east a tinge of golden red poured over the silvery landscape ; for a moment there was a hovering between twilight and morning, then the sun rose, bringing light but no warmth, and the great conqueror who in the summer colors earth and skies in varied hue seemed unable to affect the mass of white or to change the great shroud into a wedding-garment. The noisy crows alone made dark spots upon the landscape and brought discord and disturbance into silence and harmony. No one in the village had yet stirred out of doors ; the peasants were still lying upon their warm bake-ovens hibernating until the spring-time, when the increasing hunger would drive them out of doors and press the plow into their hands. The snow lay up to the windows of the low cabins, which were kept from being lost in the colorless landscape by the dirt of doors and outer walls. Horses, cattle, and fowl were indoors with the peasants, and within many a hut was heard the faint cock-crow, followed by the grunting of an unfed pig or the hoofbeat of a restless horse. From above the snow, like strange -shaped mushrooms, peeped with their Chinese roofs the white towers flanking the gateway to the Tolstoy estate, and the trunks of the trees within made dark lines upon the whiteness, showing the well-worn road between them. At the door we were met by Maria Levovna, the Count's favorite daughter, who has been constantly at his bedside, and who at this time was acting as his private secretary and is his confidential friend. Among the Count's children the daughters had the greatest sympathy with his teachings, although since they have married they have gone the way of the world, much to his regret.

When we arrived, Countess Tolstoy was still in her room ; she rises very late, her work keeping her up until past midnight. She is now correcting a new edition of her husband's works, and between the struggle with publishers and proof-readers she is taxed to the utmost, although she preserves both her youth and strength to a remarkable degree. Any one who saw her a few evenings before at the symphony concert in Moscow, radiant in a light gray silk costume, her bright eyes shining from pleasure, would not have realized how much work and how many years are burdening her.

We were immediately shown to our rooms, but great was our astonishment when we found one of them to be the Count's former study, which had been converted into a guest-room after his removal upstairs was necessitated by his severe illness. Mr. P. immediately called an indignation meeting to protest against such sacrilege, and we unanimously declared our disapproval of the change. The room should have been kept as it was. Those scattered books, that table full of loose pages of manuscript, the large ink-pot, the Count's picturesque but crude scythe, and his working garments — all are gone ; the books are transferred to book-cases, where they stand like soldiers in perfect order, and our unpoetic satchels lie upon the table where he wrote all the books which made him famous. Surely there will be no holy shrine to which enthusiastic Tolstoyans may make a pilgrimage in after years, for the devastation seems complete. A physician who now is a member of the household lives in the Count's former bedroom, but the simple furniture has been left just as it was. At the breakfast-table we find the usual contingent of strangers, and we look at one another in rather an unfriendly way, as much as to say, " What in the world brought you here to trouble a poor old sick man — can't you leave him alone?" We are good mind-readers, all of us, and we stare at each other during the informal meal, drinking our hot tea in silence ; and no friendlier look comes over the faces of these somebodies and nobodies when our party is asked to go upstairs to see the Count.

The room which we enter is spacious and comfortable ; two large windows look out over the tree-tops and upon the silent fields of Yasnaya. The eye instinctively seeks the Count, and we are much startled as we see him. He is so thin that his features stand out with unusual sharpness. The eyes are still searching, but show the effect of much suffering, and a veil like the shadow of a passing cloud hangs over them. His voice, too, has grown weak, and his hand-clasp is like the touch of gloved fingers, without warmth or strength ; but the greeting is not less cordial than ever. Now, struggling with approaching death, he is fastening upon paper memories and impressions of bygone years, and when every moment is precious he yet denies himself to no one, and does not stint the time which he gives to his friends. It is such a large welcome as only a large soul can give one. It is in striking contrast to the welcome which one receives from every other member of his household. Every one, from the Countess down to the guests of yesterday, makes you feel that you are here by grace alone, but he makes you feel immediately that you have done him a favor by. coming. It is this natural and grateful outflow of his noble soul toward another that charms every one who comes in touch with him. Yet I cannot say that one feels comfortable so close to him. He searches too deeply. He penetrates down to the impurest motive which brought you here, and you feel as if you were a thief caught in the act of breaking one of the commandments. I find that all those who come " in spirit and in truth " share this feeling with me, and I should not wonder if in the other world I see him sitting on one of those twelve thrones " judging the tribes of Israel."

The conversation first turned upon his own health. He has been near death's door ; the heart almost ceased its task of sending blood through his body, the limbs were cold and motionless, and around his bedside through many an anxious night stood loving watchers who feared the coming of a lightless morning. But no fear was his ; he was not being dragged to his grave. Calmly he awaited the moment of his departure, and he struggled neither for life nor with death. He dropped no pious phrases as he told us of his nearness to the other world ; it was the story of a traveler who came near to the gate of a city whose name and location he knew not, but of the existence of which he was quite sure. He did not tell as much of himself as we should have liked to hear; he quickly turned the conversation to the art-

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ist's and writer's work and plans, to N.'s children, whom he loves, and to all the living things which interest him so much. The praise of Yasnaya's quiet he turned into a sarcastic denunciation of the effort in the cities to build houses of entertainment for the laborers. " You take them out of the pure air into a place crowded by people, you compel them to breathe dust, dirt, and disease, and you call that helping the poor to enjoy themselves." My praise of the People's Palace in St. Petersburg, built by the present czar, found no echo in his heart. He does not believe in "throwing sweet morsels to a starving peasantry/' although he was glad to hear of my observation of increasing temperance, or at least of a decrease of drunkenness, in the Russian cities where the dives have been entirely closed and people's theaters and tea-houses have taken their places.

Upon our inquisitive looks at his writing-desk, he told us that he was then hard at work writing his reminiscences, and that he had finished a new story based upon his experiences in the Caucasus, and he read us page after page of the simple but beautiful narrative from his life in

ii those wild mountain regions. His style seems simpler than ever ; clear and sharp stand out his characters. The background is faint, scarcelytouched, but the men and women whom he portrays are alive, and the truth they speak is clear and their words are pure. They are created by his love for all the men he met and knew in those young years of his eventful life.

The manuscript is as unreadable as ever, and Maria Levovna had to be called upon to decipher those passages in which her father's pen had tangled the thought of the story by successive corrections. He was greatest and most precious when he laid down the manuscript and began to tell of his own feelings and emotions in those days. How little he spares himself ! he gathers up every scrap of the past, even if by so doing he tarnishes his halo ; but he tells truth and loves truth, even if truth makes him unlovely.

We know now that the stories of his childhood and youth which were the first products of his pen were not entirely autobiographical ; that, in fact, they contained much which, while it grew in him, he did not experience in actual life. He made us all laugh by telling the story of his first dancing-lesson. He was so ungraceful that the dancing-master tied a stick of wood to his legs to make them stand out straight. " I could make better use of that stick of wood now/' he said, pointing to his limbs, which were wrapped in a blanket. "But I shall surprise you to-morrow. I shall go for a walk."

After dinner, N. was asked to play. The poor musician was so nervous that he had scarcely eaten anything, and when he sat down to the piano he fairly trembled from stage fright. First on the programme were Tolstoy's old favorites, Gliick, Brahms, and Handel. " They are so quiet," he says ; " their passion was lofty and never base." Mozart came next, and charmed him most, for he loves him above all the composers. He never stirs the evil and the low within us," he says of him; "and when he touches the emotions, he does it with delicacy and purity." Chopin Tolstoy enjoys very much, and among Slavic composers he finds him the most sympathetic. During the playing of one of Beethoven's sonatas he grew visibly agitated ; and that much-condemned "Kreutzer Sonata" he heard with pleasure. Schumann's songs brought tears to his eyes. " It touched my heart so/' he said, in excuse for his seeming weakness.

What a rapt listener he is, this iconoclast of art ! how every fiber of his being responds to it, how he draws it in and how it intoxicates him ! He knows, as did the Hebrew prophets, how art itself may become man's temple and his God, and he fights against his natural devotion to it, fearing that it might lure him from the narrow path which he has marked out for himself.

Long after the piano has echoed its last vibrant note we sit in silence and muse. The snowflakes fall thick and fast upon the already heavy-laden tree-tops, and it is winter without and within. The Count sits with his head sunk over his breast, the fingers of both hands pressed against each other, and tears in his eyes. Schumann's "Du bist die Ruh " has brought them out of his heart. Quiet, quiet everywhere but in our hearts ; and is there quiet in his now that he is snowed in by old age and feels the approach of death ? With peace upon his brow, there is also much pain, and such furrows seam his face as no other plowman draws but he who comes with labor and with tears. The glow of artistic success, the gratitude of those whom he has helped into the light, — these ought to make the evening of his pilgrimage glorious. Yet each life has its tragedies, and those of us who know realize that he will carry to the yonder side some great sorrows. His tears are for a little boy, "Vantshek," as they called him, the only one of his thirteen children into whom seemed to have been breathed the same spirit by which he was filled by the Creator. The little one looked into the world with the same clear eyes as did his father, and clung to him conscious of that inner relationship, the kinship of the soul. He died. The hurt in the father's heart seemed healed ; but out of the treasure of song which Schumann gave to the world, and to which he listened that afternoon, there came one tenderest note and tore open the old bleeding wound. Strangers crowd his doorway asking his blessing, and go out into the world to live as he has taught them ; strangers listen with reverence to each one of his words and become his disciples ; but among his own there is none to preach his message or to live it. No complaint has ever passed his lips, and the tragedy of his heart has no witness except his own great soul, which has taught itself to love, and in love to suffer.

His philosophy of life has not changed, his belief in the efficacy of Christ's law for the salvation of man and of society is as firm as ever, and his theological views have still the same agnostic ring ; but he knows God, prays to God, loves God, and truly "loves his neighbor as himself," and does not ask, " Who is my neighbor ? " It would belittle those great hours to tell all that he said and how he said it, to narrate his condemnations or write down what he approved. This was no day for a biographer to make notes or an artist to make sketches, but it was a day for men to look into the great heart of one of God's great men.

Russia knows no spring. April is still only winter painted green, and then all at once it is summer. Long, not over-straight furrows are being drawn upon the great fields which surround Yasnaya Polyana. Patient mujiks are led across the fertile acres by the more patient if not more intelligent horses ; and where the wooden harrow has glided over the clods, women beat them into

^.»--^J ~-> .:-**J»-~J-^~t^ -> -J. >-_> --^»-,.^.»~t.>.<> --J ■■_> ->. - --?-■* .-- - >• ... ■ - dust. A horseman comes from between the whitewashed towers, and the peasants say one to another, "Praise God, it is our master." It is a long time since they have seen him, and a longer time since they have seen him on horseback. The rider of fast horses who renounced that luxury years ago, and walked many a hundred miles, had been lifted by servants into the saddle, as he had been lifted a few months ago from voluntary hardship into involuntary ease.

The aristocratic peasant has become an aristocratic invalid, and the man who struggled for years against the conditions in which he was born will die in the same conditions, a prisoner to environment. He deplores it, mourns over it, and laments over an unreached ideal. He still envies the peasant, who, after a hard life, will lie down upon his bake-oven and die a happy death ; but as little as Tolstoy could live just like a peasant, so little can he die like one. If he had the strength, he would now, in spite of the commands and the entreaties of his physician and his wife, take the handle of the wooden plow and follow it across the fragrant upturned sod. I venture to say: " Count, you have done your plowing ; you have drawn a straighter furrow and a longer one right across Russia and into the heart of Europe and the New World ; " but the man who all his life has believed in his power of achievement shakes his head doubtfully as he views the work he has done.

The sower follows the plowman and the women who beat the clods into dust. Majestically, rhythmically, and slowly he walks across the black, rich earth, casting his seed, more worshipful than the village priest who scatters incense for more or less holy purposes. The sower carries his seed in a white linen sheet which hangs from his shoulder, and he thrusts his hand into it as does an artist his brush into his colors, or a generous man his fingers into his treasury. With wistful eyes Tolstoy follows his movements, quite unconscious of the fact that he has been sowing more precious seed upon larger fields ; but if you call his attention to this, he will say, "The best of it was only chaff." Yet undisguised pleasure shows itself in his face when one speaks of his influence which has gone over the whole world. This very spring two American millionaires came, repeating the words of the rich young ruler and receiving the

Drawn bv L. Pasternak

TOLSTOY TO-DAY same answer, but not going " away sorrowful/7 Each day brings tidings of new fields upon which the seed has fallen, each day brings some ripened fruit, some apostles, more disciples, admirers most of all. If you speak to him of this, he will answer, " Thus I know that His word is truth." Yet he envies the sower with his white sheet and his golden seed. "That man will die with nothing to regret and everything to expect," he says, and he would willingly change places with him immediately. "Why not?" he says to the astonished listener. " Is he not happier than the czar, or the emperor of Austria, or the kings of Saxony or Servia? Has he not a more guiltless conscience? Who in this world is to be envied if not he ? Has he not a saner philosophy than Nietzsche, has he not a loftier theology than the Metropolitan of Moscow, has he not a healthier enjoyment of art than Wagner, is he not in closer touch with nature than millions of the wealthy who lock themselves into fireproof cages and know nature only from the railroad cars and affection only from sentimental novels?" Such is the flow of his thought each day ; not so pessimistic as it sounds when coined into words, for hopefully and joyfully he is waiting for the harvest, and although he will not again be able to thrust his sickle into the ripened grain, he believes that " God 's in his heaven — all 's right with the world ! "

He is really aged ; his form is bent, his step is slow, but his vision is not dimmed. He is young and vigorous in his condemnations, and younger still in those things which rejuvenate themselves each day, and which never fail — Faith, Hope, and Love. He is still Russia's greatest living writer, in spite of the new stars which have arisen — Gorky, Tschechoff, Andrejeff. He is still the one bold, unmuffled voice which protests against the wrongs perpetrated by state and church, by czar, priest, and populace. His name is still the password which leads into the homes and hearts of all the lovers of freedom and believers in the law of Christ, but all he desires is to remain one of the Master's humblest disciples "even unto the end."

Chapter II Childhood And School Life

All Slavic villages are alike in their unpicturesqueness. Draw one broad street flanked by straw-thatched mud huts, with half-naked children in front of them, add a village pump, a church steeple, and as fore or background a sea of mud or a cloud of dust, and you have a village which might stand in the Hungarian Carpathians, in Poland, or in the heart of Russia. Such a one is Yasnaya Polyana in the district of Krapivka, near the city of Tula. It lies not far from the main road leading from Moscow to Kiev, which is the Jerusalem of Russia, the Mecca of every orthodox believer. The air of neglect which characterizes it extends to Count Tolstoy's estate, the entrance to which is marked by two whitewashed, half -ruined towers. At the left is an artificial pond now used by the village wromen, who wash their clothes so audibly that the woods echo from the monotonous beat of the paddles with which they belabor the wet garments. The driveway leads through a park which has grown into a forest ; leaving it, one faces a modest two-story building whose one wing is occupied by the Count and his family, while the other is a sort of city of refuge for the many named and nameless ones who seek this hospitable home. Three times in the last forty years it has received additions to suit the growing needs of the Tolstoy household, but usefulness, not beauty, was sought after and achieved, for nothing which man has done here shows the least sign of good taste, and only the shining birch and beech trees save the place from being hopelessly ugly and monotonous.

The orchard in the rear of the house has relapsed into wildness, and is almost lost in the encroaching forest. In front is a well-worn tennis-court which is of recent origin, and changes its use with the varying fashions of modern sports. On the left side of the house is a porch, large enough to be the main gathering-place of the Count's family and of his guests. One need not have a very vivid imagination to find the place melancholy ; silent and secluded it certainly is, and in the winter not far from gruesome. The estate belonged originally to the Princes of Volkonsky, an old Russian family which traces its lineage as far back as 1246, where it claims St. Michael, the Prince of Cernago, as the founder of this noble house. Maria, the only daughter of Prince Nikolai Sergejevitch Volkonsky, brought this then prosperous estate as a marriage dowry into the Tolstoy family, whose depleted fortunes received through it a welcome addition, and whose name, while much less ancient, was not less honored than that of the wealthy owners of Yasnaya Polyana. Like many of the most virile blood of Russia, the Tolstoys came originally from Germany, where they bore the prosaic name of Dick or Dickman, Tolstoy being its Russian translation. One cannot get much light upon the early family annals, some of which, however, were dark enough not to be boasted of by the Tolstoys of to-day. Courtiers and politicians there were, men with strong passions who did not shrink from dark deeds which brought them a titled name and fortune.

Of two of the Tolstoys, Ivan and Peter Andrejevitch, we know that they held high places under Peter the Great, although they had espoused the cause of Sofia, and were involved in a political plot. They gained their positions by their usefulness to the monarch, who finally appointed Peter Andrejevitch Tolstoy ambassador to Turkey, where because of changing political currents he was cast into prison, and only after four years of severe suffering returned to Russia a poor man ; later, the magnanimous czar recompensed him for his hardships by new offices and grants of money. In the adventurous journey of the czar through Holland and France, Peter Andrejevitch accompanied him, rising steadily in his favor, and was finally given the delicate mission of searching for Czarevitch Alexej, who had fled from the court, and was found by Tolstoy at St. Elmo, near Naples. The czarevitch was condemned to death, and although no public execution took place, he suffered that severest penalty, presumably at the hands of this Tolstoy, who rose so high as to fall suddenly, Peter II. banishing him to a cloister near Archangel, where he died on the 17th of February, 1729. While Peter Andrejevitch left upon his family a shadow, which in the social life of the court might even be considered a halo, he also left some literary productions which show him to have had no mean talent as an author and a translator, the books he gathered in his exile vouching for his taste in that direction. This ancestor left to the present heir of his name and title the literary tendency, and no doubt Tolstoy's democratic spirit was furthered in its development by the consciousness that a great and lofty name and fame may come from very low sources. The son of this first Count Tolstoy also died in exile ; of the son whom he left, nothing is known except the fact that he was the father of one Andrej Ivanovitch, whose son began to make the name of Tolstoy renowned by great heroism in battle, and by being the grandfather of the present Tolstoy, whose fame is destined to be more lasting than his, although not won at court or on battlefield.