diff options
Diffstat (limited to 'old/rtlst09.txt')
| -rw-r--r-- | old/rtlst09.txt | 2950 |
1 files changed, 2950 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/old/rtlst09.txt b/old/rtlst09.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5aac16a --- /dev/null +++ b/old/rtlst09.txt @@ -0,0 +1,2950 @@ +*****The Project Gutenberg Etext of Reminiscences of Tolstoy**** + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. We need your donations. + + +Reminiscences of Tolstoy + +by Ilya Tolstoy [his son] + +February, 1997 [Etext #813] + + +*****The Project Gutenberg Etext of Reminiscences of Tolstoy**** +*****This file should be named rtlst10.txt or rtlst0.zip****** + +Corrected EDITIONS of our etexts get a new NUMBER, rtlst11.txt. +VERSIONS based on separate sources get new LETTER, rtlst10a.txt. + + +This etext was created by Judith Boss, Omaha, Nebraska. + + +We are now trying to release all our books one month in advance +of the official release dates, for time for better editing. + +Please note: neither this list nor its contents are final till +midnight of the last day of the month of any such announcement. +The official release date of all Project Gutenberg Etexts is at +Midnight, Central Time, of the last day of the stated month. A +preliminary version may often be posted for suggestion, comment +and editing by those who wish to do so. To be sure you have an +up to date first edition [xxxxx10x.xxx] please check file sizes +in the first week of the next month. Since our ftp program has +a bug in it that scrambles the date [tried to fix and failed] a +look at the file size will have to do, but we will try to see a +new copy has at least one byte more or less. + + +Information about Project Gutenberg (one page) + +We produce about two million dollars for each hour we work. The +fifty hours is one conservative estimate for how long it we take +to get any etext selected, entered, proofread, edited, copyright +searched and analyzed, the copyright letters written, etc. This +projected audience is one hundred million readers. If our value +per text is nominally estimated at one dollar then we produce $2 +million dollars per hour this year as we release thirty-two text +files per month: or 400 more Etexts in 1996 for a total of 800. +If these reach just 10% of the computerized population, then the +total should reach 80 billion Etexts. We will try add 800 more, +during 1997, but it will take all the effort we can manage to do +the doubling of our library again this year, what with the other +massive requirements it is going to take to get incorporated and +establish something that will have some permanence. + +The Goal of Project Gutenberg is to Give Away One Trillion Etext +Files by the December 31, 2001. [10,000 x 100,000,000=Trillion] +This is ten thousand titles each to one hundred million readers, +which is only 10% of the present number of computer users. 2001 +should have at least twice as many computer users as that, so it +will require us reaching less than 5% of the users in 2001. + + +We need your donations more than ever! + + +All donations should be made to "Project Gutenberg" + + +For these and other matters, please mail to: + +Project Gutenberg +P. O. Box 2782 +Champaign, IL 61825 + +When all other email fails try our Executive Director: +Michael S. Hart <hart@pobox.com> + +We would prefer to send you this information by email +(Internet, Bitnet, Compuserve, ATTMAIL or MCImail). + +****** +If you have an FTP program (or emulator), please +FTP directly to the Project Gutenberg archives: +[Mac users, do NOT point and click. . .type] + +ftp uiarchive.cso.uiuc.edu +login: anonymous +password: your@login +cd etext/etext90 through /etext97 +or cd etext/articles [get suggest gut for more information] +dir [to see files] +get or mget [to get files. . .set bin for zip files] +GET INDEX?00.GUT +for a list of books +and +GET NEW GUT for general information +and +MGET GUT* for newsletters. + +**Information prepared by the Project Gutenberg legal advisor** +(Three Pages) + + +***START**THE SMALL PRINT!**FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS**START*** +Why is this "Small Print!" statement here? You know: lawyers. +They tell us you might sue us if there is something wrong with +your copy of this etext, even if you got it for free from +someone other than us, and even if what's wrong is not our +fault. So, among other things, this "Small Print!" statement +disclaims most of our liability to you. It also tells you how +you can distribute copies of this etext if you want to. + +*BEFORE!* YOU USE OR READ THIS ETEXT +By using or reading any part of this PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm +etext, you indicate that you understand, agree to and accept +this "Small Print!" statement. If you do not, you can receive +a refund of the money (if any) you paid for this etext by +sending a request within 30 days of receiving it to the person +you got it from. If you received this etext on a physical +medium (such as a disk), you must return it with your request. + +ABOUT PROJECT GUTENBERG-TM ETEXTS +This PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext, like most PROJECT GUTENBERG- +tm etexts, is a "public domain" work distributed by Professor +Michael S. Hart through the Project Gutenberg (the "Project"). +Among other things, this means that no one owns a United States +copyright on or for this work, so the Project (and you!) can copy +and distribute it in the United States without permission and +without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth +below, apply if you wish to copy and distribute this etext +under the Project's "PROJECT GUTENBERG" trademark. + +To create these etexts, the Project expends considerable +efforts to identify, transcribe and proofread public domain +works. Despite these efforts, the Project's etexts and any +medium they may be on may contain "Defects". Among other +things, Defects may take the form of incomplete, inaccurate or +corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other +intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged +disk or other etext medium, a computer virus, or computer +codes that damage or cannot be read by your equipment. + +LIMITED WARRANTY; DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES +But for the "Right of Replacement or Refund" described below, +[1] the Project (and any other party you may receive this +etext from as a PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm etext) disclaims all +liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including +legal fees, and [2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR +UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR FOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, +INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE +OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE +POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES. + +If you discover a Defect in this etext within 90 days of +receiving it, you can receive a refund of the money (if any) +you paid for it by sending an explanatory note within that +time to the person you received it from. If you received it +on a physical medium, you must return it with your note, and +such person may choose to alternatively give you a replacement +copy. If you received it electronically, such person may +choose to alternatively give you a second opportunity to +receive it electronically. + +THIS ETEXT IS OTHERWISE PROVIDED TO YOU "AS-IS". NO OTHER +WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS +TO THE ETEXT OR ANY MEDIUM IT MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT +LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A +PARTICULAR PURPOSE. + +Some states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or +the exclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the +above disclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you +may have other legal rights. + +INDEMNITY +You will indemnify and hold the Project, its directors, +officers, members and agents harmless from all liability, cost +and expense, including legal fees, that arise directly or +indirectly from any of the following that you do or cause: +[1] distribution of this etext, [2] alteration, modification, +or addition to the etext, or [3] any Defect. + +DISTRIBUTION UNDER "PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm" +You may distribute copies of this etext electronically, or by +disk, book or any other medium if you either delete this +"Small Print!" and all other references to Project Gutenberg, +or: + +[1] Only give exact copies of it. Among other things, this + requires that you do not remove, alter or modify the + etext or this "small print!" statement. You may however, + if you wish, distribute this etext in machine readable + binary, compressed, mark-up, or proprietary form, + including any form resulting from conversion by word pro- + cessing or hypertext software, but only so long as + *EITHER*: + + [*] The etext, when displayed, is clearly readable, and + does *not* contain characters other than those + intended by the author of the work, although tilde + (~), asterisk (*) and underline (_) characters may + be used to convey punctuation intended by the + author, and additional characters may be used to + indicate hypertext links; OR + + [*] The etext may be readily converted by the reader at + no expense into plain ASCII, EBCDIC or equivalent + form by the program that displays the etext (as is + the case, for instance, with most word processors); + OR + + [*] You provide, or agree to also provide on request at + no additional cost, fee or expense, a copy of the + etext in its original plain ASCII form (or in EBCDIC + or other equivalent proprietary form). + +[2] Honor the etext refund and replacement provisions of this + "Small Print!" statement. + +[3] Pay a trademark license fee to the Project of 20% of the + net profits you derive calculated using the method you + already use to calculate your applicable taxes. If you + don't derive profits, no royalty is due. Royalties are + payable to "Project Gutenberg Association within the 60 + days following each date you prepare (or were legally + required to prepare) your annual (or equivalent periodic) + tax return. + +WHAT IF YOU *WANT* TO SEND MONEY EVEN IF YOU DON'T HAVE TO? +The Project gratefully accepts contributions in money, time, +scanning machines, OCR software, public domain etexts, royalty +free copyright licenses, and every other sort of contribution +you can think of. Money should be paid to "Project Gutenberg +Association". + +*END*THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + +This etext was created by Judith Boss, Omaha, Nebraska. + + + + + +Reminiscences of Tolstoy +by His Son, Count Ilya Tolstoy + + + + + + <b>REMINISCENCES OF TOLSTOY</b> + + BY HIS SON, COUNT ILYÁ TOLSTOY + + TRANSLATED BY GEORGE CALDERON + +IN one of his letters to his great-aunt, Alexándra +Andréyevna Tolstoy, my father gives the following +description of his children: + + The eldest [Sergéi] is fair-haired and good-looking; +there is something weak and patient in his expression, and very +gentle. His laugh is not infectious; but when he cries, I can +hardly refrain from crying, too. Every one says he is like my +eldest brother. + I am afraid to believe it. It is too good to be true. My +brother's chief characteristic was neither egotism nor self- +renunciation, but a strict mean between the two. He never +sacrificed himself for any one else; but not only always avoided +injuring others, but also interfering with them. He kept his +happiness and his sufferings entirely to himself. + Ilyá, the third, has never been ill in his life; +broad-boned, white and pink, radiant, bad at lessons. Is always +thinking about what he is told not to think about. Invents his +own games. Hot-tempered and violent, wants to fight at once; but +is also tender-hearted and very sensitive. Sensuous; fond of +eating and lying still doing nothing. + Tánya [Tatyána] is eight years old. Every one +says that she is like Sonya, and I believe them, although I am +pleased about that, too; I believe it only because it is obvious. +If she had been Adam's eldest daughter and he had had no other +children afterward, she would have passed a wretched childhood. +The greatest pleasure that she has is to look after children. + The fourth is Lyoff. Handsome, dexterous, good memory, +graceful. Any clothes fit him as if they had been made for him. +Everything that others do, he does very skilfully and well. Does +not understand much yet. + The fifth, Masha [Mary] is two years old, the one whose +birth nearly cost Sonya her life. A weak and sickly child. Body +white as milk, curly white hair; big, queer blue eyes, queer by +reason of their deep, serious expression. Very intelligent and +ugly. She will be one of the riddles; she will suffer, she will +seek and find nothing, will always be seeking what is least +attainable. + The sixth, Peter, is a giant, a huge, delightful baby in a +mob-cap, turns out his elbows, strives eagerly after something. +My wife falls into an ecstasy of agitation and emotion when she +holds him in her arms; but I am completely at a loss to +understand. I know that he has a great store of physical energy, +but whether there is any purpose for which the store is wanted I +do not know. That is why I do not care for children under two or +three; I don't understand. + + This letter was written in 1872, when I was six years old. +My recollections date from about that time. I can remember a few +things before. + + + FAMILY LIFE IN THE COUNTRY + +FROM my earliest childhood until the family moved into Moscow-- +that was in <p 188> 1881--all my life was spent, almost without a +break, at Yásnaya Polyána. + This is how we live. The chief personage in the house is my +mother. She settles everything. She interviews Nikolái, +the cook, and orders dinner; she sends us out for walks, makes +our shirts, is always nursing some baby at the breast; all day +long she is bustling about the house with hurried steps. One can +be naughty with her, though she is sometimes angry and punishes +us. + She knows more about everything than anybody else. She +knows that one must wash every day, that one must eat soup at +dinner, that one must talk French, learn not to crawl about on +all fours, not to put one's elbows on the table; and if she says +that one is not to go out walking because it is just going to +rain, she is sure to be right, and one must do as she says. + Papa is the cleverest man in the world. He always knows +everything. There is no being naughty with <i>him</i>. When he +is up in his study "working," one is not allowed to make a noise, +and nobody may go into his room. What he does when he is at +"work," none of us know. Later on, when I had learned to read, I +was told that papa was a "writer." + This was how I learned. I was very pleased with some lines +of poetry one day, and asked my mother who wrote them. She told +me they were written by Pushkin, and Pushkin was a great writer. +I was vexed at my father not being one, too. Then my mother said +that my father was also a well-known writer, and I was very glad +indeed. + At the dinner-table papa sits opposite mama and has his own +round silver spoon. When old Natália Petróvna, who +lives on the floor below with great-aunt Tatyána +Alexándrovna, pours herself out a glass of kvass, he picks +it up and drinks it right off, then says, "Oh, I'm so sorry, +Natália Petróvna; I made a mistake!" We all laugh +delightedly, and it seems odd that papa is not in the least +afraid of Natália Petróvna. When there is jelly +for pudding, papa says it is good for gluing paper boxes; we run +off to get some paper, and papa makes it into boxes. Mama is +angry, but he is not afraid of her either. We have the gayest +times imaginable with him now and then. He can ride a horse +better and run faster than anybody else, and there is no one in +the world so strong as he is. + He hardly ever punishes us, but when he looks me in the eyes +he knows everything that I think, and I am frightened. You can +tell stories to mama, but not to papa, because he will see +through you at once. So nobody ever tries. + Besides papa and mama, there was also Aunt Tatyána +Alexándrovna Yergolsky. In her room she had a big eikon +with a silver mount. We were very much afraid of this eikon, +because it was very old and black. + When I was six, I remember my father teaching the village +children. They had their lessons in "the other house,"¹ +where Alexey Stepánytch, the bailiff, lived, and sometimes +on the ground floor of the house we lived in. + There were a great number of village children who used to +come. When they came, the front hall smelled of sheepskin +jackets; they were taught by papa and Seryózha and +Tánya and Uncle Kóstya all at once. Lesson-time +was very gay and lively. + The children did exactly as they pleased, sat where they +liked, ran about from place to place, and answered questions not +one by one, but all together, interrupting one another, and +helping one another to recall what they had read. If one left +out a bit, up jumped another and then another, and the story or +sum was reconstructed by the united efforts of the whole class. + What pleased my father most about his pupils was the +picturesqueness and originality of their language. He never +wanted a literal repetition of bookish expressions, and +particularly encouraged every one to speak "out of his own head." +I remember how once he stopped a boy who was running into the +next room. + "Where are <i>you</i> off to?" he asked. + "To uncle, to bite off a piece of chalk."² + "Cut along, cut along! It's not for us to teach them, but +for them to teach + + ¹ The name we gave to the stone annex. + ² The instinct for lime, necessary to feed their bones, +drives Russian children to nibble pieces of chalk or the +whitewash off the wall. In this case the boy was running to one +of the grown-ups in the house, and whom he called uncle, as +Russian children call everybody uncle or aunt, to get a piece of +the chalk that he had for writing on the blackboard. +<p 189> +us," he said to some one when the boy was gone. Which of us +would have expressed himself like that? You see, he did not say +to "get" or to "break off," but to "bite off," which was right, +because they did literally "bite" off the chalk from the lump +with their teeth, and not break it off. + + + THE SERVANTS IN THE HOUSE + +WHEN my father married and brought home his young and +inexperienced bride, Sófya Andréyevna, to +Yásnaya Polyána, Nikolái +Mikháilovitch Rumyántsef was already established as +cook. Before my father's marriage he had a salary of five rubles +a month; but when my mother arrived, she raised him to six, at +which rate he continued the rest of his days; that is, till +somewhere about the end of the eighties. He was succeeded in the +kitchen by his son, Semyon Nikoláyevitch, my mother's +godson, and this worthy and beloved man, companion of my childish +games, still lives with us to this day. Under my mother's +supervision he prepared my father's vegetarian diet with +affectionate zeal, and without him my father would very likely +never have lived to the ripe old age he did. + Agáfya Mikháilovna was an old woman who lived +at first in the kitchen of "the other house" and afterward on the +home farm. Tall and thin, with big, thoroughbred eyes, and long, +straight hair, like a witch, turning gray, she was rather +terrifying, but more than anything else she was queer. + Once upon a time long ago she had been housemaid to my +great-grandmother, Countess Pelagéya Nikoláyevna +Tolstoy, my father's grandmother, née Princess +Gortchakóva. She was fond of telling about her young +days. She would say: + + I was very handsome. When there were gentlefolks visiting +at the big house, the countess would call me, 'Gachette +[Agáfya], femme de chambre, apportez-moi un mouchoir!' +Then I would say, <i>'Toute suite, Madame la Comtesse!'</i> And +every one would be staring at me, and couldn't take their eyes +off. When I crossed over to the annex, there they were watching +to catch me on the way. Many a time have I tricked them--ran +round the other way and jumped over the ditch. I never liked +that sort of thing any time. A maid I was, a maid I am. + + After my grandmother's death, Agáfya +Mikháilovna was sent on to the home farm for some reason +or other, and minded the sheep. She got so fond of sheep that +all her days after she never would touch mutton. + After the sheep, she had an affection for dogs, and that is +the only period of her life that I remember her in. + There was nothing in the world she cared about but dogs. +She lived with them in horrible dirt and smells, and gave up her +whole mind and soul to them. We always had setters, harriers, +and <i>borzois,</i> and the whole kennel, often very numerous, +was under Agáfya Mikháilovna's management, with +some boy or other to help her, usually one as clumsy and stupid +as could be found. + There are many interesting recollections bound up with the +memory of this intelligent and original woman. Most of them are +associated in my mind with my father's stories about her. He +could always catch and unravel any interesting psychological +trait, and these traits, which he would mention incidentally, +stuck firmly in my mind. He used to tell, for instance, how +Agáfya Mikháilovna complained to him of +sleeplessness. + "Ever since I can remember her, she has suffered from 'a +birch-tree growing inside me from my belly up; it presses against +my chest, and prevents my breathing.' + "She complains of her sleeplessness and the birch-tree and +says: 'There I lay all alone and all quiet, only the clock +ticking on the wall: "Who are you? What are you? Who are you? +What are you?" And I began to think: "Who am I? What am I?" and +so I spent the whole night thinking about it.' + "Why, imagine this is Socrates! 'Know thyself,'" said my +father, telling the story with great enthusiasm. + In the summer-time my mother's brother, Styópa +(Stephen Behrs), who was studying at the time in the school of +jurisprudence, used to come and stay with us. In the autumn he +used to go wolf-hunting with my father and us, with the +<i>borzois,</i> and Agáfya Mikháilovna loved him +for that. <p 190> + Styópa's examination was in the spring. +Agáfya Mikháilovna knew about it and anxiously +waited for the news of whether he had got through. + Once she put up a candle before the eikon and prayed that +Styópa might pass. But at that moment she remembered that +her <i>borzois</i> had got out and had not come back to the +kennels again. + "Saints in heaven! they'll get into some place and worry the +cattle and do a mischief!" she cried. "'Lord, let my candle burn +for the dogs to come back quick, and I'll buy another for Stepan +Andréyevitch.' No sooner had I said this to myself than I +heard the dogs in the porch rattling their collars. Thank God! +they were back. That's what prayer can do." + Another favorite of Agáfya Mikháilovna was a +young man, Mísha Stakhóvitch, who often stayed with +us. + "See what you have been and done to me, little Countess!" +she said reproachfully to my sister Tánya: "you've +introduced me to Mikhail Alexandrovitch, and I've fallen in love +with him in my old age, like a wicked woman!" + On the fifth of February, her name-day, Agáfya +Mikháilovna received a telegram of congratulation from +Stakhóvitch. + When my father heard of it, he said jokingly to +Agáfya Mikháilovna: + "Aren't you ashamed that a man had to trudge two miles +through the frost at night all for the sake of your telegram?" + "Trudge, trudge? Angels bore him on their wings. Trudge, +indeed! You get three telegrams from an outlandish Jew woman," +she growled, "and telegrams every day about your Golokhvotika. +Never a trudge then; but I get name-day greetings, and it's +trudge!" + And one could not but acknowledge that she was right. This +telegram, the only one in the whole year that was addressed to +the kennels, by the pleasure it gave Agáfya +Mikháilovna was far more important of course than this +news or the about a ball given in Moscow in honor of a Jewish +banker's daughter, or about Olga Andréyevna +Golokvástovy's arrival at Yásnaya. + Agáfya Mikháilovna died at the beginning of +the nineties. There were no more hounds or sporting dogs at +Yásnaya then, but till the end of her days she gave +shelter to a motley collection of mongrels, and tended and fed +them. + + + THE HOME OF THE TOLSTOYS + +I CAN remember the house at Yásnaya Polyána in the +condition it was in the first years after my father's marriage. + It was one of the two-storied wings of the old mansion-house +of the Princes Volkónsky, which my father had sold for +pulling down when he was still a bachelor. + From what my father has told me, I know that the house in +which he was born and spent his youth was a three-storied +building with thirty-six rooms. On the spot where it stood, +between the two wings, the remains of the old stone foundation +are still visible in the form of trenches filled with rubble, and +the site is covered with big sixty-year-old trees that my father +himself planted. + When any one asked my father where he was born, he used to +point to a tall larch which grew on the site of the old +foundations. + "Up there where the top of that larch waves," he used to +say; "that's where my mother's room was, where I was born on a +leather sofa." + My father seldom spoke of his mother, but when he did, it +was delightful to hear him, because the mention of her awoke an +unusual strain of gentleness and tenderness in him. There was +such a ring of respectful affection, so much reverence for her +memory, in his words, that we all looked on her as a sort of +saint. + My father remembered his father well, because he was already +nine years old when he died. He loved him, too, and always spoke +of him reverently; but one always felt that his mother's memory, +although he had never known her, was dearer to him, and his love +for her far greater than for his father. + Even to this day I do not exactly know the story of the sale +of the old house. My father never liked talking about it, and +for that reason I could never make up my mind to ask him the +details of the transaction. I only know that the house was sold +for five thousand paper rubles¹ by one of his relatives, who +had charge of his affairs by power of attorney when he was in the +Caucasus. + + ¹About $3000. +<p 191> +It was said to have been done in order to pay off my father's +gambling debts. That was quite true. + My father himself told me that at one time he was a great +card-player, that he lost large sums of money, and that his +financial affairs were considerably embarrassed. + The only thing about which I am in doubt is whether it was +with my father's knowledge or by his directions that the house +was sold, or whether the relative in question did not exceed his +instructions and decide on the sale of his own initiative. + My father cherished his parents' memory to such an extent, +and had such a warm affection for everything relating to his own +childhood, that it is hard to believe that he would have raised +his hand against the house in which he had been born and brought +up and in which his mother had spent her whole life. + Knowing my father as I do, I think it is highly possible +that he wrote to his relative from the Caucasus, "Sell +something," not in the least expecting that he would sell the +house, and that he afterward took the blame for it on himself. +Is that not the reason why he was always so unwilling to talk +about it? + In 1871, when I was five years old, the <i>zala</i>¹ +and study were built on the house. + The walls of the <i>zala</i> were hung with old portraits of +ancestors. They were rather alarming, and I was afraid of them +at first; but we got used to them after a time, and I grew fond +of one of them, of my great-grandfather, Ilyá +Andréyevitch Tolstoy, because I was told that I was like +him. + Beside him hung the portrait of another great-grandfather, +Prince Nikolái Sergéyevitch Volkónsky, my +grandmother's father, with thick, black eyebrows, a gray wig, and +a red <i>kaftan</i>.² + This Volkónsky built all the buildings of +Yásnaya Polyána. He was a model squire, +intelligent and proud, and enjoyed the great respect of all the +neighborhood. + On the ground floor, under the drawing-room, next to the +entrance-hall, my father built his study. He had a semi-circular +niche made in the wall, and stood a marble bust of his favorite +dead brother Nikolái in it. This bust was made abroad +from a death-mask, and my father told us that it was very like, +because it was done by a good sculptor, according to his own +directions. + He had a kind and rather plaintive face. The hair was +brushed smooth like a child's, with the parting on one side. He +had no beard or mustache, and his head was white and very, very +clean. My father's study was divided in two by a partition of +big bookshelves, containing a multitude of all sorts of books. +In order to support them, the shelves were connected by big +wooden beams, and between them was a thin birch-wood door, behind +which stood my father's writing-table and his old-fashioned +semicircular arm-chair. + There are portraits of Dickens and Schopenhauer and +Fet³ as a young man on the walls, too, and the well-known +group of writers of the Sovreménnik&sup4; circle in 1856, +with Turgénieff, Ostróvsky, Gontcharóf, +Grigoróvitch, Druzhínin, and my father, quite young +still, without a beard, and in uniform. + My father used to come out of his bedroom of a morning--it +was in a corner on the top floor--in his dressing-gown, with his +beard uncombed and tumbled together, and go down to dress. + Soon after he would issue from his study fresh and vigorous, +in a gray smock-frock, and would go up into the <i>zala</i> for +breakfast. That was our <i>déjeuner</i>. + When there was nobody staying in the house, he would not +stop long in the drawing-room, but would take his tumbler of tea +and carry it off to his study with him. + But if there were friends and guests + + ¹The <i>zala</i> is the chief room of a house, +corresponding to the English drawing-room, but on a grand scale. +The <i>gostinaya</i>--literally guest-room, usually translated as +drawing-room--is a place for more intimate receptions. At +Yásnaya Polyána meals were taken in the +<i>zala</i>, but this is not the general Russian custom, houses +being provided also with a <i>stolóvaya</i>, or dining- +room. + ²<i>Kaftan</i>, a long coat of various cuts, including +military and naval frock-coat, and the long gown worn by +coachmen. + ³Afanásyi Shénshin, the poet, who adopted +his mother's name, Fet, for a time, owing to official +difficulties about his birth-certificate. An intimate friend of +Tolstoy's. + &sup4;The "Sovreménnik," or "Contemporary Review," +edited by the poet Mekrasof, was the rallying-place for the "men +of the forties," the new school of realists. Ostróvsky is +the dramatist; Gontcharóf the novelist, author of +"Oblómof"; Grigoróvitch wrote tales about peasant +life, and was the discoverer of Tchékhof's talent as a +serious writer. +<p 192> +with us, he would get into conversation, become interested, and +could not tear himself away. + At last he would go off to his work, and we would disperse, +in winter to the different school-rooms, in summer to the +croquet-lawn or somewhere about the garden. My mother would +settle down in the drawing-room to make some garment for the +babies, or to copy out something she had not finished overnight; +and till three or four in the afternoon silence would reign in +the house. + Then my father would come out of his study and go off for +his afternoon's exercise. Sometimes he would take a dog and a +gun, sometimes ride, and sometimes merely go for a walk to the +imperial wood. + At five the big bell that hung on the broken bough of an old +elm-tree in front of the house would ring and we would all run to +wash our hands and collect for dinner. + He was very hungry, and ate voraciously of whatever turned +up. My mother would try to stop him, would tell him not to waste +all his appetite on <i>kasha,</i> because there were chops and +vegetables to follow. "You'll have a bad liver again," she would +say; but he would pay no attention to her, and would ask for more +and more, until his hunger was completely satisfied. Then he +would tell us all about his walk, where he put up a covey of +black game, what new paths he discovered in the imperial wood +beyond Kudeyarof Well, or, if he rode, how the young horse he was +breaking in began to understand the reins and the pressure of the +leg. All this he would relate in the most vivid and entertaining +way, so that the time passed gaily and animatedly. + After dinner he would go back to his room to read, and at +eight we had tea, and the best hours of the day began--the +evening hours, when everybody gathered in the <i>zala</i>. The +grown-ups talked or read aloud or played the piano, and we either +listened to them or had some jolly game of our own, and in +anxious fear awaited the moment when the English +grandfather-clock on the landing would give a click and a buzz, +and slowly and clearly ring out ten. + Perhaps mama would not notice? She was in the sitting-room, +making a copy. + "Come, children, bedtime! Say good night," she would call. + "In a minute, Mama; just five minutes." + "Run along; it's high time; or there will be no getting you +up in the morning to do your lessons." + We would say a lingering good night, on the lookout for any +chance for delay, and at last would go down-stairs through the +arches, annoyed at the thought that we were children still and +had to go to bed while the grown-ups could stay up as long as +ever they liked. + + + A JOURNEY TO THE STEPPES + +WHEN I was still a child and had not yet read "War and Peace," I +was told that <i>Natásha Rostóf</i> was Aunt +Tánya. When my father was asked whether that was true, +and whether <i>Dmitry Rostóf</i> was such and such a +person and <i>Levin</i> such and such another, he never gave a +definite answer, and one could not but feel that he disliked such +questions and was rather offended by them. + In those remote days about which I am talking, my father was +very keen about the management of his estate, and devoted a lot +of energy to it. I can remember his planting the huge apple +orchard at Yásnaya and several hundred acres of birch and +pine forest, and at the beginning of the seventies, for a number +of years, he was interested in buying up land cheap in the +province of Samara, and breeding droves of steppe horses and +flocks of sheep. + I still have pretty clear, though rather fragmentary and +inconsequent, recollections of our three summer excursions to the +steppes of Samara. + My father had already been there before his marriage in +1862, and afterward by the advice of Dr. Zakháryin, who +attended him. He took the kumiss-cure in 1871 and 1872, and at +last, in 1873, the whole family went there. + At that time my father had bought several hundred acres of +cheap Bashkir lands in the district of Buzulúk, and we +went to stay on our new property at a <i>khutor,</i> or farm. + In Samara we lived on the farm in a tumble-down wooden +house, and beside us, in the steppe, were erected two felt +<i>kibitkas,</i> or Tatar frame tents, in which [illustration +omitted] [page intentionally blank] <p 193> our Bashkir, Muhammed +Shah Romanytch, lived with his wives. + Morning and evening they used to tie the mares up outside +the <i>kibitkas,</i> where they were milked by veiled women, who +then hid themselves from the sight of the men behind a brilliant +chintz curtain, and made the kumiss. + The kumiss was bitter and very nasty, but my father and my +uncle Stephen Behrs were very fond of it, and drank it in large +quantities. + When we boys began to get big, we had at first a German +tutor for two or three years, Fyódor Fyódorovitch +Kaufmann. + I cannot say that we were particularly fond of him. He was +rather rough, and even we children were struck by his German +stupidity. His redeeming feature was that he was a devoted +sportsman. Every morning he used to jerk the blankets off us and +shout, "Auf, Kinder! auf!" and during the daytime plagued us with +German calligraphy. + + + OUTDOOR SPORTS + +THE chief passion of my childhood was riding. I well remember +the time when my father used to put me in the saddle in front of +him and we would ride out to bathe in the Voronka. I have +several interesting recollections connected with these rides. + One day as we were going to bathe, papa turned round and +said to me: + "Do you know, Ilyúsha, I am very pleased with myself +to-day. I have been bothered with her for three whole days, and +could not manage to make her go into the house; try as I would, +it was impossible. It never would come right. But to-day I +remembered that there is a mirror in every hall, and that every +lady wears a bonnet. + "As soon as I remembered that, she went where I wanted her +to, and did everything she had to. You would think a bonnet is a +small affair, but everything depended on that bonnet." + As I recall this conversation, I feel sure that my father +was talking about that scene in "Anna Karénina" where +<i>Anna</i> went to see her son. + Although in the final form of the novel nothing is said in +this scene either about a bonnet or a mirror,--nothing is +mentioned but a thick black veil,--still, I imagine that in its +original form, when he was working on the passage, my father may +have brought Anna up to the mirror, and made her straighten her +bonnet or take it off. + I can remember the interest with which he told me this, and +it now seems strange that he should have talked about such subtle +artistic experiences to a boy of seven who was hardly capable of +understanding him at the time. However, that was often the case +with him. + I once heard from him a very interesting description of what +a writer needs for his work: + "You cannot imagine how important one's mood is," he said. +"Sometimes you get up in the morning, fresh and vigorous, with +your head clear, and you begin to write. Everything is sensible +and consistent. You read it over next day, and have to throw the +whole thing away, because, good as it is, it misses the main +thing. There is no imagination in it, no subtlety, none of the +necessary something, none of that only just without which all +your cleverness is worth nothing. Another day you get up after a +bad night, with your nerves all on edge, and you think, 'To-day I +shall write well, at any rate.' And as a matter of fact, what +you write is beautiful, picturesque, with any amount of +imagination. You look it through again; it is no good, because it +is written stupidly. There is plenty of color, but not enough +intelligence. + "One's writing is good only when the intelligence and the +imagination are in equilibrium. As soon as one of them +overbalances the other, it's all up; you may as well throw it +away and begin afresh." + As a matter of fact, there was no end to the rewriting in my +father's works. His industry in this particular was truly +marvelous. + We were always devoted to sport from our earliest childhood. +I can remember as well as I remember myself my father's favorite +dog in those days, an Irish setter called Dora. They would bring +round the cart, with a very quiet horse between the shafts, and +we would drive out to the marsh, to Degatná or to +Malákhov. My father and sometimes my mother or a coachman +sat on the seat, while I and Dora lay on the floor. <p 194> + When we got to the marsh, my father used to get out, stand +his gun on the ground, and, holding it with his left hand, load +it. + Dora meanwhile fidgeted about, whining impatiently and +wagging her thick tail. + While my father splashed through the marsh, we drove round +the bank somewhat behind him, and eagerly followed the ranging of +the dog, the getting up of the snipe, and the shooting. My +father sometimes shot fairly well, though he often lost his head, +and missed frantically. + But our favorite sport was coursing with greyhounds. What a +pleasure it was when the footman Sergei Petrovitch came in and +woke us up before dawn, with a candle in his hand! + We jumped up full of energy and happiness, trembling all +over in the morning cold; threw on our clothes as quickly as we +could, and ran out into the <i>zala,</i> where the samovar was +boiling and papa was waiting for us. + Sometimes mama came in in her dressing-gown, and made us put +on all sorts of extra woolen stockings, and sweaters and gloves. + "What are you going to wear, Lyovótchka?" she would +say to papa. "It's very cold to-day, and there is a wind. Only +the Kuzminsky overcoat again today? You must put on something +underneath, if only for my sake." + Papa would make a face, but give in at last, and buckle on +his short gray overcoat under the other and sally forth. It +would then be growing light. Our horses were brought round, we +got on, and rode first to "the other house," or to the kennels to +get the dogs. + Agáfya Mikháilovna would be anxiously waiting +us on the steps. Despite the coldness of the morning, she would +be bareheaded and lightly clad, with her black jacket open, +showing her withered, old bosom. She carried the dog-collars in +her lean, knotted hands. + "Have you gone and fed them again?" asks my father, +severely, looking at the dogs' bulging stomachs. + "Fed them? Not a bit; only just a crust of bread apiece." + "Then what are they licking their chops for?" + "There was a bit of yesterday's oatmeal left over." + "I thought as much! All the hares will get away again. It +really is too bad! Do you do it to spite me?" + "You can't have the dogs running all day on empty stomachs, +Lyoff Nikolaievich," she grunted, going angrily to put on the +dogs' collars. + At last the dogs were got together, some of them on leashes, +others running free; and we would ride out at a brisk trot past +Bitter Wells and the grove into the open country. + My father would give the word of command, "Line out!" and +point out the direction in which we were to go, and we spread out +over the stubble fields and meadows, whistling and winding about +along the lee side of the steep balks,¹ beating all the +bushes with our hunting-crops, and gazing keenly at every spot or +mark on the earth. + Something white would appear ahead. We stared hard at it, +gathered up the reins, examined the leash, scarcely believing the +good luck of having come on a hare at last. Then riding up +closer and closer, with our eyes on the white thing, it would +turn out to be not a hare at all, but a horse's skull. How +annoying! + We would look at papa and Seryózha, thinking, "I +wonder if they saw that I took that skull for a hare." But papa +would be sitting keen and alert on his English saddle, with the +wooden stirrups, smoking a cigarette, while Seryózha would +perhaps have got his leash entangled and could not get it +straight. + "Thank heaven!" we would exclaim, "nobody saw me! What a +fool I should have felt!" So we would ride on. + The horse's even pace would begin to rock us to sleep, +feeling rather bored at nothing getting up; when all of a sudden, +just at the moment we least expected it, right in front of us, +twenty paces away, would jump up a gray hare as if from the +bowels of the earth. + The dogs had seen it before we had, and had started forward +already in full pursuit. We began to bawl, "Tally-ho! tally-ho!" +like madmen, flogging our horses with all our might, and flying +after them. + + ¹The balks are the banks dividing the fields of +different owners or crops. Hedges are not used for this purpose +in Russia. +<p 195> + The dogs would come up with the hare, turn it, then turn it +again, the young and fiery Sultan and Darling running over it, +catching up again, and running over again; and at last the old +and experienced Winger, who had been galloping on one side all +the time, would seize her opportunity, and spring in. The hare +would give a helpless cry like a baby, and the dogs, burying +their fangs in it, in a star-shaped group, would begin to tug in +different directions. + "Let go! Let go!" + We would come galloping up, finish off the hare, and give +the dogs the tracks,¹ tearing them off toe by toe, and +throwing them to our favorites, who would catch them in the air. +Then papa would teach us how to strap the hare on the back of the +saddle. + After the run we would all be in better spirits, and get to +better places near Yásenki and Rétinka. Gray hares +would get up oftener. Each of us would have his spoils in the +saddle-straps now, and we would begin to hope for a fox. + Not many foxes would turn up. If they did, it was generally +Tumashka, who was old and staid, who distinguished himself. He +was sick of hares, and made no great effort to run after them; +but with a fox he would gallop at full speed, and it was almost +always he who killed. + It would be late, often dark, when we got back home. + + + "ANNA KARÉNINA" + +I REMEMBER my father writing his alphabet and reading-book in +1871 and 1872, but I cannot at all remember his beginning "Anna +Karénina." I probably knew nothing about it at the time. +What did it matter to a boy of seven what his father was writing? +It was only later, when one kept hearing the name again and +again, and bundles of proofs kept arriving, and were sent off +almost every day, that I understood that "Anna Karénina" +was the name of the novel on which my father and mother were both +at work. + My mother's work seemed much harder than my father's, +because we actually saw her at it, and she worked much longer +hours than he did. She used to sit in the sitting-room off the +<i>zala,</i> at her little writing-table, and spend all her free +time writing. + Leaning over the manuscript and trying to decipher my +father's scrawl with her short-sighted eyes, she used to spend +whole evenings over it, and often sat up late at night after +everybody else had gone to bed. Sometimes, when anything was +written quite illegibly, she would go to my father's study and +ask him what it meant. But this was very rare, because my mother +did not like to disturb him. + When it happened, my father used to take the manuscript in +his hand, and ask with some annoyance, "What on earth is the +difficulty?" and would begin to read it out aloud. When he came +to the difficult place he would mumble and hesitate, and +sometimes had the greatest difficulty in making out, or, rather, +in guessing, what he had written. He had a very bad handwriting, +and a terrible habit of writing in whole sentences between the +lines, or in the corners of the page, or sometimes right across +it. + My mother often discovered gross grammatical errors, and +pointed them out to my father, and corrected them. + When "Anna Karénina" began to come out in the "Russky +Vyéstnik,"² long galley-proofs were posted to my +father, and he looked them through and corrected them. + At first the margins would be marked with the ordinary +typographical signs, letters omitted, marks of punctuation, etc.; +then individual words would be changed, and then whole sentences, +till in the end the proof-sheet would be reduced to a mass of +patches quite black in places, and it was quite impossible to +send it back as it stood, because no one but my mother could make +head or tail of the tangle of conventional signs, transpositions, +and erasures. + My mother would sit up all night copying the whole thing out +afresh. + In the morning there would lie the pages on her table, +neatly piled together, covered all over with her fine, clear +handwriting, and everything ready so that when +"Lyovótchka" got up he could send the proof-sheets off by +post. + + ¹<i>Pazanki</i>, tracks of a hare, name given to the +last joint of the hind legs. + ²A Moscow monthly, founded by Katkóf, who +somehow managed to edit both this and the daily +"Moskóvskiya Vyédomosti," on which "Uncle +Kóstya" worked at the same time. +<p 196> + My father carried them off to his study to have "just one +last look," and by the evening it would be just as bad again, the +whole thing having been rewritten and messed up. + "Sonya my dear, I am very sorry, but I've spoiled all your +work again; I promise I won't do it any more," he would say, +showing her the passages he had inked over with a guilty air. +"We'll send them off to-morrow without fail." But this to-morrow +was often put off day by day for weeks or months together. + "There's just one bit I want to look through again," my +father would say; but he would get carried away and recast the +whole thing afresh. + There were even occasions when, after posting the proofs, he +would remember some particular words next day, and correct them +by telegraph. Several times, in consequence of these rewritings, +the printing of the novel in the "Russky Vyéstnik" was +interrupted, and sometimes it did not come out for months +together. + In the last part of "Anna Karénina" my father, in +describing the end of <i>Vronsky's</i> career, showed his +disapproval of the volunteer movement and the Panslavonic +committees, and this led to a quarrel with Katkóf. + I can remember how angry my father was when Katkóf +refused to print those chapters as they stood, and asked him +either to leave out part of them or to soften them down, and +finally returned the manuscript, and printed a short note in his +paper to say that after the death of the heroine the novel was +strictly speaking at an end; but that the author had added an +epilogue of two printed sheets, in which he related such and such +facts, and he would very likely "develop these chapters for the +separate edition of his novel." + In concluding, I wish to say a few words about my father's +own opinion of "Anna Karénina." + In 1875 he wrote to N. N. Strákhof: + "I must confess that I was delighted by the success of the +last piece of 'Anna Karénina.' I had by no means expected +it, and to tell you the truth, I am surprised that people are so +pleased with such ordinary and <i>empty</i> stuff." + The same year he wrote to Fet: + "It is two months since I have defiled my hands with ink or +my heart with thoughts. But now I am setting to work again on my +<i>tedious, vulgar 'Anna Karénina,'</i> with only one +wish, to clear it out of the way as soon as possible and give +myself leisure for other occupations, but not schoolmastering, +which I am fond of, but wish to give up; it takes up too much +time." + In 1878, when the novel was nearing its end, he wrote again +to Strákhof: + "I am frightened by the feeling that I am getting into my +summer mood again. I <i>loathe</i> what I have written. The +proof-sheets for the April number [of "Anna Karénina" in +the "Russky Vyéstnik"] now lie on my table, and I am +afraid that I have not the heart to correct them. +<i>Everything</i> in them is <i>beastly,</i> and the whole thing +ought to be rewritten,--all that has been printed, too,--scrapped +and melted down, thrown away, renounced. I ought to say, 'I am +sorry; I will not do it any more,' and try to write something +fresh instead of all this incoherent, neither-fish-nor-flesh- +nor-fowlish stuff." + That was how my father felt toward his novel while he was +writing it. Afterward I often heard him say much harsher things +about it. + "What difficulty is there in writing about how an officer +fell in love with a married woman?" he used to say. "There's no +difficulty in it, and above all no good in it." + I am quite convinced that if my father could have done so, +he long ago would have destroyed this novel, which he never liked +and always wanted to disown. + + (To be continued) + + + + +<p 418> + <b>REMINISCENCES OF TOLSTOY</b> + + BY HIS SON, COUNT ILYÁ TOLSTOY + + TRANSLATED BY GEORGE CALDERON + +IN the summer, when both families were together at Yásnaya, +our own and the Kuzmínsky's, when both the house and the +annex were full of the family and their guests, we used our +letter-box. + It originated long before, when I was still small and had only +just learned to write, and it continued with intervals till the +middle of the eighties. + It hung on the landing at the top of the stairs beside the +grandfather's clock; and every one dropped his compositions into +it, the verses, articles, or stories that he had written on topical +subjects in the course of the week. + On Sundays we would all collect at the round table in the +<i>zala,</i> the box would be solemnly opened, and one of the +grown-ups, often my father himself, would read the contents aloud. + All the papers were unsigned, and it was a point of honor not +to peep at the handwriting; but, despite this, we almost always +guessed the author, either by the style, by his self-consciousness, +or else by the strained indifference of his expression. + When I was a boy, and for the first time wrote a set of French +verses for the letter-box, I was so shy when they were read that I +hid under the table, and sat there the whole evening until I was +pulled out by force. + For a long time after, I wrote no more, and was always fonder +of hearing other people's compositions read than my own. + All the events of our life at Yásnaya Polyána +found their echo in one way or another in the letter-box, and no +one was spared, not even the grown-ups. + All our secrets, all our love-affairs, all the incidents of +our complicated life were revealed in the letter-box, and both +household and visitors were good-humoredly made fun of. + Unfortunately, much of the correspondence has been lost, but +bits of it have been preserved by some of us in copies or in +memory. I cannot recall everything interesting that there was in +it, but here are a few of the more interesting things from the +period of the eighties. + + + THE LETTER-BOX + +THE old fogy continues his questions. Why, when women or old men +enter the room, does every well-bred person not only offer them a +seat, but give them up his own? + Why do they make Ushakóf or some Servian officer who +comes to pay a visit necessarily stay to tea or dinner? + Why is it considered wrong to let an older person or a woman +help you on with your overcoat? + And why are all these charming rules considered obligatory +toward others, when every day ordinary people come, and we not only +do not ask them to sit down or to stop to dinner or spend the night +or render them any service, but would look on it as the height of +impropriety? + Where do those people end to whom we are under these +obligations? By what characteristics are the one sort +distinguished from the others? And are not all these rules of +politeness bad, if they do not extend to all sorts of people? And +is not what we call politeness an illusion, and a very ugly +illusion? + LYOFF TOLSTOY. + + Question: Which is the most "beastly plague," a cattle-plague +case for a farmer, or the ablative case for a school-boy? + LYOFF TOLSTOY. + + Answers are requested to the following questions: + Why do Ustyúsha, Masha, Alyóna, Peter, etc., +have to bake, boil, sweep, empty slops, wait at table, while the +gentry have only to eat, gobble, quarrel, make slops, and eat +again? + LYOFF TOLSTOY. +<p 419> + My Aunt Tánya, when she was in a bad temper because the +coffee-pot had been spilt or because she had been beaten at +croquet, was in the habit of sending every one to the devil. My +father wrote the following story, "Susóitchik," about it. + + The devil, not the chief devil, but one of the rank and file, +the one charged with the management of social affairs, +Susóitchik by name, was greatly perturbed on the 6th of +August, 1884. From the early morning onward, people kept arriving +who had been sent him by Tatyána Kuzmínsky. + The first to arrive was Alexander Mikháilovitch +Kuzmínsky; the second was Mísha Islávin; the +third was Vyatcheslaf; the fourth was Seryózha Tolstoy, and +last of all came old Lyoff Tolstoy, senior, accompanied by Prince +Urúsof. The first visitor, Alexander Mikháilovitch, +caused Susóitchik no surprise, as he often paid +Susóitchik visits in obedience to the behests of his wife. + "What, has your wife sent you again?" + "Yes," replied the presiding judge of the district-court, +shyly, not knowing what explanation he could give of the cause of +his visit. + "You come here very often. What do you want?" + "Oh, nothing in particular; she just sent her compliments," +murmured Alexander Mikháilovitch, departing from the exact +truth with some effort. + "Very good, very good; come whenever you like; she is one of +my best workers." + Before Susóitchik had time to show the judge out, in +came all the children, laughing and jostling, and hiding one behind +the other. + "What brought you here, youngsters? Did my little +Tanyítchka send you? That's right; no harm in coming. Give +my compliments to Tánya, and tell her that I am always at +her service. Come whenever you like. Old Susóitchik may be +of use to you." + No sooner had the young folk made their bow than old Lyoff +Tolstoy appeared with Prince Urúsof. + "Aha! so it's the old boy! Many thanks to Tanyítchka. +It's a long time since I have seen you, old chap. Well and hearty? +And what can I do for you?" + Lyoff Tolstoy shuffled about, rather abashed. + Prince Urúsof, mindful of the etiquette of diplomatic +receptions, stepped forward and explained Tolstoy's appearance by +his wish to make acquaintance with Tatyána +Andréyevna's oldest and most faithful friend. + "Les amis des nos amis sont nos amis." + "Ha! ha! ha! quite so!" said Susóitchik. "I must +reward her for to-day's work. Be so kind, Prince, as to hand her +the marks of my good-will." + And he handed over the insignia of an order in a morocco case. +The insignia consisted of a necklace of imp's tails to be worn +about the throat, and two toads, one to be worn on the bosom and +the other on the bustle. + LYOFF TOLSTOY, SENIOR. + + + SERGÉI NIKOLÁYEVITCH TOLSTOY + +I CAN remember my Uncle Seryózha (Sergéi) from my +earliest childhood. He lived at Pirogóvo, twenty miles from +Yásnaya, and visited us often. + As a young man he was very handsome. He had the same features +as my father, but he was slenderer and more aristocratic-looking. +He had the same oval face, the same nose, the same intelligent gray +eyes, and the same thick, overhanging eyebrows. The only +difference between his face and my father's was defined by the fact +that in those distant days, when my father cared for his personal +appearance, he was always worrying about his ugliness, while Uncle +Seryózha was considered, and really was, a very handsome +man. + This is what my father says about Uncle Seryózha in his +fragmentary reminiscences: + "I and Nítenka¹ were chums, Nikólenka I +revered, but Seryózha I admired enthusiastically and +imitated; I loved him and wished to be he. + "I admired his handsome exterior, his singing,--he was always +a singer,--his drawing, his gaiety, and above all, however strange +a thing it may seem to say, the directness of his egoism.² + "I always remembered myself, was aware of myself, always +divined rightly or wrongly what others thought about me and felt +toward me; and this spoiled the joy of life for me. This was +probably the + + ¹Dmitry. My father's brother Dmitry died in 1856; +Nikolái died September 20, 1860. + ² That is to say, his eyes went always on the straightest +road to attain satisfaction for himself. +<p 420> +reason why I particularly delighted in the opposite of this in +other people; namely, directness of egoism. That is what I +especially loved in Seryózha, though the word 'loved' is +inexact. + "I loved Nikólenka, but I admired Seryózha as +something alien and incomprehensible to me. It was a human life +very beautiful, but completely incomprehensible to me, mysterious, +and therefore especially attractive. + "He died only a few days ago, and while he was ill and while +he was dying he was just as inscrutable and just as dear to me as +he had been in the distant days of our childhood. + "In these latter days, in our old age, he was fonder of me, +valued my attachment more, was prouder of me, wanted to agree with +me, but could not, and remained just the same as he had always +been; namely, something quite apart, only himself, handsome, +aristocratic, proud, and, above all, truthful and sincere to a +degree that I never met in any other man. + "He was what he was; he concealed nothing, and did not wish to +appear anything different." + Uncle Seryózha never treated children affectionately; +on the contrary, he seemed to put up with us rather than to like +us. But we always treated him with particular reverence. The +result, as I can see now, partly of his aristocratic appearance, +but chiefly because of the fact that he called my father +"Lyovótchka" and treated him just as my father treated us. + He was not only not in the least afraid of him, but was always +teasing him, and argued with him like an elder person with a +younger. We were quite alive to this. + Of course every one knew that there were no faster dogs in the +world than our black-and-white Darling and her daughter Wizard. +Not a hare could get away from them. But Uncle Seryózha +said that the gray hares about us were sluggish creatures, not at +all the same thing as steppe hares, and neither Darling nor Wizard +would get near a steppe hare. + We listened with open mouths, and did not know which to +believe, papa or Uncle Seryózha. + Uncle Seryózha went out coursing with us one day. A +number of gray hares were run down, not one, getting away; Uncle +Seryózha expressed no surprise, but still maintained that +the only reason was because they were a poor lot of hares. We +could not tell whether he was right or wrong. + Perhaps, after all, he was right, for he was more of a +sportsman than papa and had run down ever so many wolves, while we +had never known papa run any wolves down. + Afterward papa kept dogs only because there was Agáfya +Mikháilovna to be thought of, and Uncle Seryózha gave +up sport because it was impossible to keep dogs. + "Since the emancipation of the peasants," he said, "sport is +out of the question; there are no huntsmen to be had, and the +peasants turn out with sticks and drive the sportsmen off the +fields. What is there left to do nowadays? Country life has +become impossible." + With all his good breeding and sincerity, Uncle +Seryózha never concealed any characteristic but one; with +the utmost shyness he concealed the tenderness of his affections, +and if it ever forced itself into the light, it was only in +exceptional circumstances and that against his will. + He displayed with peculiar clearness a family characteristic +which was partly shared by my father, namely, an extraordinary +restraint in the expression of affection, which was often concealed +under the mask of indifference and sometimes even of unexpected +harshness. In the matter of wit and sarcasm, on the other hand, he +was strikingly original. + At one period he spent several winters in succession with his +family in Moscow. One time, after a historic concert given by +Anton Rubinstein, at which Uncle Seryózha and his daughter +had been, he came to take tea with us in Weavers' Row.¹ + My father asked him how he had liked the concert. + "Do you remember Himbut, Lyovótchka? Lieutenant +Himbut, who was forester near Yásnaya? I once asked him +what was the happiest moment of his life. Do you know what he +answered? + "'When I was in the cadet corps,' he said, 'they used to take +down my breeches now and again and lay me across a bench and flog +me. They flogged and they + + ¹Khamsvniki, a street in Moscow. +<p 421> +flogged; when they stopped, that was the happiest moment of my +life.' Well, it was only during the <i>entr'actes,</i> when +Rubinstein stopped playing, that I really enjoyed myself." + He did not always spare my father. + Once when I was out shooting with a setter near +Pirogóvo, I drove in to Uncle Seryózha's to stop the +night. + I do not remember apropos of what, but Uncle Seryózha +averred that Lyovótchka was proud. He said: + "He is always preaching humility and non-resistance, but he is +proud himself. + "Náshenka's¹ sister had a footman called Forna. +When he got drunk, he used to get under the staircase, tuck in his +legs, and lie down. One day they came and told him that the +countess was calling him. 'She can come and find me if she wants +me,' he answered. + "Lyovótchka is just the same. When Dolgóruky +sent his chief secretary Istómin to ask him to come and have +a talk with him about Syntáyef, the sectarian, do you know +what he answered? + "'Let him come here, if he wants me.' Isn't that just the +same as Forna? + "No, Lyovótchka is very proud. Nothing would induce +him to go, and he was quite right; but it's no good talking of +humility." + During the last years of Sergéi Nikoláyevitch's +life my father was particularly friendly and affectionate with him, +and delighted in sharing his thoughts with him. + A. A. Fet in his reminiscences describes the character of all +the three Tolstoy brothers with extraordinary perspicacity: + + I am convinced that the fundamental type of all the three +Tolstoy brothers was identical, just as the type of all +maple-leaves is identical, despite the variety of their +configurations. And if I set myself to develop the idea, I could +show to what a degree all three brothers shared in that passionate +enthusiasm without which it would have been impossible for one of +them to turn into the poet Lyoff Tolstoy. The difference of their +attitude to life was determined by the difference of the ways in +which they turned their backs on their unfulfilled dreams. +Nikolái quenched his ardor in skeptical derision, Lyoff +renounced his unrealized dreams with silent reproach, and +Sergéi with morbid misanthropy. The greater the original +store of love in such characters, the stronger, if only for a time, +is their resemblance to <i>Timon of Athens</i>. + +In the winter of 1901-02 my father was ill in the Crimea, and for +a long time lay between life and death. Uncle Seryózha, who +felt himself getting weaker, could not bring himself to leave +Pirogóvo, and in his own home followed anxiously the course +of my father's illness by the letters which several members of our +family wrote him, and by the bulletins in the newspapers. + When my father began to improve, I went back home, and on the +way from the Crimea went to Pirogóvo, in order to tell Uncle +Seryózha personally about the course of the illness and +about the present condition of my father's health. I remember how +joyfully and gratefully he welcomed me. + "How glad I am that you came! Now tell me all about it. Who +is with him? All of them? And who nurses him most? Do you go on +duty in turn? And at night, too? He can't get out of bed. Ah, +that's the worst thing of all! + "It will be my turn to die soon; a year sooner or later, what +does it matter? But to lie helpless, a burden to every one, to +have others doing everything for you, lifting you and helping you +to sit up, that's what's so awful. + "And how does he endure it? Got used to it, you say? No; I +cannot imagine having Vera to change my linen and wash me. Of +course she would say that it's nothing to her, but for me it would +be awful. + "And tell me, is he afraid to die? Does he say not? Very +likely; he's a strong man, he may be able to conquer the fear of +it. Yes, yes, perhaps he's not afraid; but still-- + "You say he struggles with the feeling? Why, of course; what +else can one do? + "I wanted to go and be with him; but I thought, how can I? I +shall crack up myself, and then there will be two invalids instead +of one. + "Yes, you have told me a great deal; every detail is +interesting. It is not death that's so terrible, it's illness, +helpless- + + ¹Maria Mikháilovna, his wife. +<p 422> +ness, and, above all, the fear that you are a burden to others. +That's awful, awful." + Uncle Seryózha died in 1904 of cancer in the face. +This is what my aunt, María Nikoláyevna,¹ the +nun, told me about his death. Almost to the last day he was on his +legs, and would not let any one nurse him. He was in full +possession of his faculties and consciously prepared for death. + Besides his own family, the aged María +Mikháilovna and her daughters, his sister, María +Nikoláyevna, who told me the story, was with him, too, and +from hour to hour they expected the arrival of my father, for whom +they had sent a messenger to Yásnaya. They were all +troubled with the difficult question whether the dying man would +want to receive the holy communion before he died. + Knowing Sergéi Nikoláyevitch's disbelief in the +religion of the church, no one dared to mention the subject to him, +and the unhappy María Mikháilovna hovered round his +room, wringing her hands and praying. + They awaited my father's arrival impatiently, but were +secretly afraid of his influence on his brother, and hoped against +hope that Sergéi Nikoláyevitch would send for the +priest before his arrival. + "Imagine our surprise and delight," said María Tolstoy, +"when Lyovótchka came out of his room and told María +Mikháilovna that Seryózha wanted a priest sent for. +I do not know what they had been talking about, but when +Seryózha said that he wished to take the communion, +Lyovótchka answered that he was quite right, and at once +came and told us what he wanted." + My father stayed about a week at Pirogóvo, and left two +days before my uncle died. + When he received a telegram to say he was worse, he drove over +again, but arrived too late; he was no longer living. He carried +his body out from the house with his own hands, and himself bore it +to the churchyard. + When he got back to Yásnaya he spoke with touching +affection of his parting with this "inscrutable and beloved" +brother, who was so strange and remote from him, but at the same +time so near and so akin. + + + FET, STRAKHOF, GAY + +"WHAT'S this saber doing here?" asked a young guardsman, Lieutenant +Afanásyi Afanásyevitch Fet, of the footman one day +as he entered the hall of Iván Sergéyevitch +Turgénieff's flat in St. Petersburg in the middle of the +fifties. + "It is Count Tolstoy's saber; he is asleep in the +drawing-room. And Iván Sergéyevitch is in his study +having breakfast," replied Zalchar. + "During the hour I spent with Turgénieff," says Fet, in +his reminiscences, "we talked in low voices, for fear of waking the +count, who was asleep on the other side of the door." + "He's like that all the time," said Turgénieff, +smiling; "ever since he got back from his battery at +Sebastopol,² and came to stay here, he has been going the +pace. Orgies, Gipsies, and gambling all night long, and then +sleeps like a dead man till two o'clock in the afternoon. I did my +best to stop him, but have given it up as a bad job. + "It was in this visit to St. Petersburg that I and Tolstoy +became acquainted, but the acquaintance was of a purely formal +character, as I had not yet seen a line of his writings, and had +never heard of his name in literature, except that +Turgénieff mentioned his 'Stories of Childhood.'" + Soon after this my father came to know Fet intimately, and +they struck up a firm and lasting friendship, and established a +correspondence which lasted almost till Fet's death. + It was only during the last years of Fet's life, when my +father was entirely absorbed in his new ideas, which were so at +variance with Afanásyi Afanásyevitch's whole +philosophy of life, that they became estranged and met more rarely. + It was at Fet's, at Stepánovka, that my father and +Turgénieff quarreled. + Before the railway was made, when people still had to drive, +Fet, on his way into Moscow, always used to turn in at +Yásnaya Polyána to see my father, and these visits +became an established custom. Afterward, when the railway was made +and my father was already married, Afanásyi +Afanásyevitch still never passed our house without coming +in, and if he did, + + ¹Tolstoy's sister. She became a nun after her husband's +death and the marriage of her three daughters. + ²Tolstoy was in the artillery, and commanded a battery in +the Crimea. +<p 423> +my father used to write him a letter of earnest reproaches, and he +used to apologize as if he had been guilty of some fault. In those +distant times of which I am speaking my father was bound to Fet by +a common interest in agriculture as well as literature. + Some of my father's letters of the sixties are curious in this +respect. + For instance, in 1860, he wrote a long dissertation on +Turgénieff's novel "On the Eve," which had just come out, +and at the end added a postscript: "What is the price of a set of +the best quality of veterinary instruments? And what is the price +of a set of lancets and bleeding-cups for human use?" + In another letter there is a postscript: + "When you are next in Oryol, buy me six-hundred weight of +various ropes, reins, and traces," and on the same page: "'Tender +art thou,' and the whole thing is charming. You have never done +anything better; it is all charming." The quotation is from Fet's +poem: + +The lingering clouds' last throng flies over us. + + But it was not only community of interests that brought my +father and Afanásyi Afanásyevitch together. The +reason of their intimacy lay in the fact that, as my father +expressed it, they "thought alike with their heart's mind." + I also remember Nikolái Nikoláyevitch Strakhof's +visits. He was a remarkably quiet and modest man. He appeared at +Yásnaya Polyána in the beginning of the seventies, +and from that time on came and stayed with us almost every summer +till he died. + He had big, gray eyes, wide open, as if in astonishment; a +long beard with a touch of gray in it; and when he spoke, at the +end of every sentence he gave a shy laugh. + When he addressed my father, he always said "Lef +Nikoláyevitch" instead of Lyoff Nikolaievich, like other +people. + He always stayed down-stairs in my father's study, and spent +his whole day there reading or writing, with a thick cigarette, +which he rolled himself, in his mouth. + Strakhof and my father came together originally on a purely +business footing. When the first part of my father's "Alphabet and +Reading-Book" was printed, Strakhof had charge of the +proof-reading. This led to a correspondence between him and my +father, of a business character at first, later developing into +a philosophical and friendly one. While he was writing "Anna +Karénina," my father set great store by his opinion and +valued his critical instinct very highly. + "It is enough for me that that is your opinion," he writes +in a letter of 1872, probably apropos of the "Alphabet." + In 1876, apropos of "Anna Karénina" this time, my +father wrote: + "You ask me whether you have understood my novel aright, and +what I think of your opinion. Of course you understood it aright. +Of course I am overjoyed at your understanding of it; but it does +not follow that everybody will understand it as you do." + But it was not only his critical work that drew my father to +Strakhof. He disliked critics on the whole and used to say that +the only people who took to criticism were those who had no +creative faculty of their own. "The stupid ones judge the clever +ones," he said of professional critics. What he valued most in +Strakhof was the profound and penetrating thinker. He was a "real +friend" of my father's,--my father himself so described him,--and +I recall his memory with deep affection and respect. + At last I have come to the memory of the man who was nearer in +spirit to my father than any other human being, namely, +Nikolái Nikoláyevitch Gay. Grandfather Gay, as we +called him, made my father's acquaintance in 1882. While living +on his farm in the Province of Tchernigoff, he chanced to read my +father's pamphlet "On the Census," and finding a solution in it of +the very questions which were troubling him at the time, without +delay he started out and hurried into Moscow. I remember his first +arrival, and I have always retained the impression that from the +first words they exchanged he and my father understood each other, +and found themselves speaking the same language. + Just like my father, Gay was at this time passing through a +great spiritual crisis; and traveling almost the same road as my +father in his search after truth, he had arrived at the study of +the Gospel <p 424> and a new understanding of it. My sister +Tatyána wrote: + +For the personality of Christ he entertained a passionate and +tender affection, as if for a near and familiar friend whom he +loved with all the strength of his soul. Often during heated +arguments Nikolái Nikoláyevitch would take the +Gospel, which he always carried about with him, from his pocket, +and read out some passage from it appropriate to the subject in +hand. "This book contains everything that a man needs," he used to +say on these occasions. + While reading the Gospel, he often looked up at the person he +was talking to and went on reading without looking at the book. +His face glowed at such moments with such inward joy that one could +see how near and dear the words he was reading were to his heart. + He knew the whole Gospel almost by heart, but he said that +every time he read it he enjoyed a new and genuine spiritual +delight. He said that not only was everything intelligible to him +in the Gospel, but that when he read it he seemed to be reading in +his own soul, and felt himself capable of rising higher and higher +toward God and merging himself in Him. + + + TURGÉNIEFF + +I DO not mean to recount all the misunderstandings which existed +between my father and Turgénieff, which ended in a complete +breach between them in 1861. The actual external facts of that +story are common property, and there is no need to repeat +them.¹ According to general opinion, the quarrel between the +two greatest writers of the day arose out of their literary +rivalry. + It is my intention to show cause against this generally +received opinion, and before I come to Turgénieff's visits +to Yásnaya Polyána, I want to make as clear as I can +the real reason of the perpetual discords between these two +good-hearted people, who had a cordial affection for each other-- +discords which led in the end to an out-and-out quarrel and the +exchange of mutual defiance. + As far as I know, my father never had any serious difference +with any other human being during the whole course of his +existence. And Turgénieff, in a letter to my father in +1865, wrote, "You are the only man with whom I have ever had +misunderstandings." + Whenever my father related his quarrel with Iván +Sergéyevitch, he took all the blame on himself. +Turgénieff, immediately after the quarrel, wrote a letter +apologizing to my father, and never sought to justify his own part +in it. + Why was it that, as Turgénieff himself put it, his +"constellation" and my father's "moved in the ether with +unquestioned enmity"? + This is what my sister Tatyána wrote on the subject in +her article "Turgénieff," published in the supplement to +the "Novoye Vrémya," February 2, 1908: + + All question of literary rivalry, it seems to me, is utterly +beside the mark. Turgénieff, from the very outset of my +father's literary career, acknowledged his enormous talents, and +never thought of rivalry with him. From the moment when, as early +as 1854, he wrote to Kolbásina, "If Heaven only grant +Tolstoy life, I confidently hope that he will surprise us all," he +never ceased to follow my father's work with interest, and always +expressed his unbounded admiration of it. + + "When this young wine has done fermenting," he wrote to +Druzhénin in 1856, "the result will be a liquor worthy of +the gods." In 1857 he wrote to Polónsky, "This man will go +far, and leave deep traces behind him." + Nevertheless, somehow these two men never could "hit it off" +together. When one reads Turgénieff's letters to my father, +one sees that from the very beginning of their acquaintance +misunderstandings were always arising, which they perpetually +endeavored to smooth down or to forget, but which arose again after +a time, sometimes in another form, necessitating new explanations +and reconciliations. + In 1856 Turgénieff wrote to my father: + + Your letter took some time reaching me, dear Lyoff +Nikolaievich. Let me begin by + + ¹Fet, at whose house the quarrel took place, tells all +about it in his memoirs. Tolstoy dogmatized about lady-like +charity, apropos of Turgénieff's daughter. +Turgénieff, in a fit of nerves, threatened to box his ears. +Tolstoy challenged him to a duel, and Turgénieff apologized. +<p 425> +saying that I am very grateful to you for sending it to me. I +shall never cease to love you and to value your friendship, +although, probably through my fault, each of us will long feel +considerable awkwardness in the presence of the other. . . . I +think that you yourself understand the reason of this awkwardness +of which I speak. You are the only man with whom I have ever had +misunderstandings. + This arises from the very fact that I have never been willing +to confine myself to merely friendly relations with you. I have +always wanted to go further and deeper than that; but I set about +it clumsily. I irritated and upset you, and when I saw my mistake, +I drew back too hastily, perhaps; and it was this which caused this +"gulf" between us. + But this awkwardness is a mere physical impression, nothing +more; and if when we meet again, you see the old "mischievous look +in my eyes," believe me, the reason of it will not be that I am a +bad man. I assure you that there is no need to look for any other +explanation. Perhaps I may add, also, that I am much older than +you, and I have traveled a different road. . . . Outside of our +special, so-called "literary" interests, I am convinced, we have +few points of contact. Your whole being stretches out hands toward +the future; mine is built up in the past. For me to follow you is +impossible. For you to follow me is equally out of the question. +You are too far removed from me, and besides, you stand too firmly +on your own legs to become any one's disciple. I can assure you +that I never attributed any malice to you, never suspected you of +any literary envy. I have often thought, if you will excuse the +expression, that you were wanting in common sense, but never in +goodness. You are too penetrating not to know that if either of us +has cause to envy the other, it is certainly not you that has cause +to envy me. + + The following year he wrote a letter to my father which, it +seems to me, is a key to the understanding of Turgénieff's +attitude toward him: + + You write that you are very glad you did not follow my advice +and become a pure man of letters. I don't deny it; perhaps you are +right. Still, batter my poor brains as I may, I cannot imagine +what else you are if you are not a man of letters. A soldier? A +squire? A philosopher? The founder of a new religious doctrine? +A civil servant? A man of business? . . . Please resolve my +difficulties, and tell me which of these suppositions is correct. +I am joking, but I really do wish beyond all things to see you +under way at last, with all sails set. + + It seems to me that Turgénieff, as an artist, saw +nothing in my father beyond his great literary talent, and was +unwilling to allow him the right to be anything besides an artist +and a writer. Any other line of activity on my father's part +offended Turgénieff, as it were, and he was angry with my +father because he did not follow his advice. He was much older +than my father,¹ he did not hesitate to rank his own talent +lower than my father's, and demanded only one thing of him, that he +should devote all the energies of his life to his literary work. +And, lo and behold! my father would have nothing to do with his +magnanimity and humility, would not listen to his advice, but +insisted on going the road which his own tastes and nature pointed +out to him. Turgénieff's tastes and character were +diametrically opposed to my father's. While opposition always +inspired my father and lent him strength, it had just the opposite +effect on Turgénieff. + Being wholly in agreement with my sister's views, I will +merely supplement them with the words uttered by his brother, +Nikolái Nikoláyevitch, who said that +"Turgénieff cannot reconcile himself to the idea that +Lyovótchka is growing up and freeing himself from his +tutelage." + As a matter of fact, when Turgénieff was already a +famous writer, no one had ever heard of Tolstoy, and, as Fet +expressed it, there was only "something said about his stories from +'Childhood.'" + I can imagine with what secret veneration a young writer, just +beginning, must have regarded Turgénieff at that time, and +all the more because Iván Sergéyevitch was a great +friend of my father's elder and beloved brother Nikolái. + I do not like to assert it positively, but it seems to me that +just as Turgénieff was unwilling to confine himself to +"merely + + ¹Turgénieff was ten years older than Tolstoy. +<p 426> +friendly relations," so my father also felt too warmly toward +Iván Sergéyevitch, and that was the very reason why +they could never meet without disagreeing and quarreling. In +confirmation of what I say here is a passage from a letter written +by V. Bótkin, a close friend of my father's and of +Iván Sergéyevitch's, to A. A. Fet, written +immediately after their quarrel: + + I think that Tolstoy really has a passionately affectionate +nature and he would like to love Turgénieff in the warmest +way possible; but unfortunately his impulsive feeling encounters +nothing but a kindly, good-natured indifference, and he can by no +means reconcile himself to that. + + Turgénieff himself said that when they first came to +know each other my father dogged his heels "like a woman in love," +and at one time he used to avoid him, because he was afraid of his +spirit of opposition. + My father was perhaps irritated by the slightly patronizing +tone which Turgénieff adopted from the very outset of their +acquaintance; and Turgénieff was irritated by my father's +"crankiness," which distracted him from "his proper +<i>métier,</i> literature." + In 1870, before the date of the quarrel, Turgénieff +wrote to Fet: + "Lyoff Tolstoy continues to play the crank. It was evidently +written in his stars. When will he turn his last somersault and +stand on his feet at last?" + Turgénieff was just the same about my father's +"Confession," which he read not long before his death. Having +promised to read it, "to try to understand it," and "not to lose my +temper," he "started to write a long letter in answer to the +'Confession,' but never finished it . . . for fear of becoming +disputatious." + In a letter to D. V. Grigórevitch he called the book, +which was based, in his opinion, on false premises, "a denial of +all live human life" and "a new sort of Nihilism." + It is evident that even then Turgénieff did not +understand what a mastery my father's new philosophy of life had +obtained over him, and he was inclined to attribute his enthusiasm +along with the rest to the same perpetual "crankinesses" and +"somersaults" to which he had formerly attributed his interest in +school-teaching, agriculture, the publication of a paper, and so +forth. + +IVÁN SERGÉYEVITCH three times visited Yásnaya +Polyána within my memory, in: August and September, 1878, +and the third and last time at the beginning of May, 1880. I can +remember all these visits, although it is quite possible that +some details have escaped me. + I remember that when we expected Turgénieff on his +first visit, it was a great occasion, and the most anxious and +excited of all the household about it was my mother. She told us +that my father had quarreled with Turgénieff and had +once challenged him to a duel, and that he was now coming at my +father's invitation to effect a reconciliation. + Turgénieff spent all the time sitting with my father, +who during his visit put aside even his work, and once in the +middle of the day my mother collected us all at a quite unusual +hour in the drawing-room, where Iván Sergéyevitch +read us his story of "The Dog." + I can remember his tall, stalwart figure, his gray, silky, +yellowish hair, his soft tread, rather waddling walk, and his +piping voice, quite out of keeping with his majestic exterior. He +had a chuckling kind of laugh, like a child's, and when he laughed +his voice was more piping than ever. + In the evening, after dinner, we all gathered in the +<i>zala</i>. At that time Uncle Seryózha, Prince +Leoníd Dmítryevitch Urúsof, Vice-Governor of +the Province of Tula; Uncle Sasha Behrs and his young wife, the +handsome Georgian Patty; and the whole family of the +Kuzmínskys, were staying at Yásnaya. + Aunt Tánya was asked to sing. We listened with +beating hearts, and waited to hear what Turgénieff, the +famous connoisseur, would say about her singing. Of course he +praised it, sincerely, I think. After the singing a quadrille was +got up. All of a sudden, in the middle of the quadrille, +Iván Sergéyevitch, who was sitting at one side +looking on, got up and took one of the ladies by the hand, and, +putting his thumbs into the armholes of his waistcoat, danced a +cancan according to the latest rules of Parisian art. Every <p +427> one roared with laughter, Turgénieff more than anybody. + After tea the "grown-ups" started some conversation, and a +warm dispute arose among them. It was Prince Urúsof who +disputed most warmly, and "went for" Turgénieff. + Of Turgénieff's third visit I remember the woodcock +shooting. This was on the second or third of May, 1880. + We all went out together beyond the Voronka, my father, my +mother and all the children. My father gave Turgénieff the +best place and posted himself one hundred and fifty paces away at +the other end of the same glade. + My mother stood by Turgénieff, and we children lighted +a bonfire not far off. + My father fired several shots and brought down two birds; +Iván Sergéyevitch had no luck, and was envying my +father's good fortune all the time. At last, when it was beginning +to get dark, a woodcock flew over Turgénieff, and he shot +it. + "Killed it?" called out my father. + "Fell like a stone; send your dog to pick him up," answered +Iván Sergéyevitch. + My father sent us with the dog, Turgénieff showed us +where to look for the bird; but search as we might, and the dog, +too, there was no woodcock to be found. At last Turgénieff +came to help, and my father came; there was no woodcock there. + "Perhaps you only winged it; it may have got away along the +ground," said my father, puzzled. "It is impossible that the dog +shouldn't find it; he couldn't miss a bird that was killed." + "I tell you I saw it with my own eyes, Lyoff Nikolaievich; it +fell like a stone. I didn't wound it; I killed it outright. I can +tell the difference." + "Then why can't the dog find it? It's impossible; there's +something wrong." + "I don't know anything about that," insisted +Turgénieff. "You may take it from me I'm not lying; it fell +like a stone where I tell you." + There was no finding the woodcock, and the incident left an +unpleasant flavor, as if one or the other of them was in the wrong. +Either Turgénieff was bragging when he said that he shot it +dead, or my father, in maintaining that the dog could not fail to +find a bird that had been killed. + And this must needs happen just when they were both so anxious +to avoid every sort of misunderstanding! That was the very reason +why they had carefully fought shy of all serious conversation, and +spent all their time merely amusing themselves. + When my father said good night to us that night, he whispered +to us that we were to get up early and go back to the place to have +a good hunt for the bird. + And what was the result? The woodcock, in falling, had caught +in the fork of a branch, right at the top of an aspen-tree, and it +was all we could do to knock it out from there. + When we brought it home in triumph, it was something of an +"occasion," and my father and Turgénieff were far more +delighted than we were. It turned out that they were both in the +right, and everything ended to their mutual satisfaction. + Iván Sergéyevitch slept down-stairs in my +father's study. When the party broke up for the night, I used to +see him to his room, and while he was undressing I sat on his bed +and talked sport with him. + He asked me if I could shoot. I said yes, but that I didn't +care to go out shooting because I had nothing but a rotten old +one-barreled gun. + "I'll give you a gun," he said. "I've got two in Paris, and +I have no earthly need for both. It's not an expensive gun, but +it's a good one. Next time I come to Russia I'll bring it with +me." + I was quite taken aback and thanked him heartily. I was +tremendously delighted at the idea that I was to have a real +central-fire gun. + Unfortunately, Turgénieff never came to Russia again. +I tried afterward to buy the gun he had spoken of from his legatees +not in the quality of a central-fire gun, but as +Turgénieff's gun; but I did not succeed. + That is all that I can remember about this delightful, +naïvely cordial man, with the childlike eyes and the childlike +laugh, and in the picture my mind preserves of him the memory of +his grandeur melts into the charm of his good nature and +simplicity. + In 1883 my father received from Iván +Sergéyevitch his last farewell letter, written in pencil on +his death-bed, and I remember with what emotion he read it. <p 428> +And when the news of his death came, my father would talk of +nothing else for several days, and inquired everywhere for details +of his illness and last days. + Apropos of this letter of Turgénieff's, I should like +to say that my father was sincerely annoyed, when he heard applied +to himself the epithet "great writer of the land of Russia," which +was taken from this letter. + He always hated <i>clichés,</i> and he regarded this +one as quite absurd. + "Why not 'writer of the land'? I never heard before that a +man could be the writer of a land. People get attached to some +nonsensical expression, and go on repeating it in season and out of +season." + I have given extracts above from Turgénieff's letters, +which show the invariable consistency with which he lauded my +father's literary talents. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same of +my father's attitude toward Turgénieff. + In this, too, the want of dispassionateness in his nature +revealed itself. Personal relations prevented him from being +objective. + In 1867, apropos of Turgénieff's "Smoke," which had +just appeared, he wrote to Fet: + + There is hardly any love of anything in "Smoke" and hardly any +poetry. The only thing it shows love for is light and playful +adultery, and for that reason the poetry of the story is repulsive. +. . . I am timid in expressing this opinion, because I cannot form +a sober judgment about an author whose personality I dislike. + +In 1865, before the final breach with Turgénieff, he wrote, +again to Fet: "I do not like 'Enough'! A personal subjective +treatment is never good unless it is full of life and passion; but +the subjectivity in this case is full of lifeless suffering. + In the autumn of 1883, after Turgénieff's death, when +the family had gone into Moscow for the winter, my father stayed at +Yásnaya Polyána alone, with Agáfya +Mikháilovna, and set earnestly about reading through all +Turgénieff's works. + This is what he wrote to my mother at the time: + + I am always thinking about Turgénieff. I am intensely +fond of him, and sorry for him, and do nothing but read him. I +live entirely with him. I shall certainly give a lecture on him, +or write it to be read; tell Yúryef. + "Enough"--read it; it is perfectly charming. + + Unfortunately, my father's intended lecture on +Turgénieff never came off. The Government forbade him to +pay this last tribute to his dead friend, with whom he had +quarreled all his life only because he could not be indifferent to +him. + + (To be continued) + + + + + +<p 561> + + REMINISCENCES OF TOLSTOY + + BY HIS SON, COUNT ILYÁ TOLSTOY + + TRANSLATED BY GEORGE CALDERON + +AT this point I shall turn back and try to trace the influence +which my father had on my upbringing, and I shall recall as well as +I can the impressions that he left on my mind in my childhood, and +later in the melancholy days of my early manhood, which happened to +coincide with the radical change in his whole philosophy of life. + In 1852, tired of life in the Caucasus and remembering his old +home at Yásnaya Polyána, he wrote to his aunt, +Tatyána Alexándrovna: + +After some years, I shall find myself, neither very young nor very +old, back at Yásnaya Polyána again: my affairs will +all be in order; I shall have no anxieties for the future and +no troubles in the present. + You also will be living at Yásnaya. You will be +getting a little old, but you will be healthy and vigorous. We +shall lead the life we led in the old days; I shall work in the +mornings, but we shall meet and see each other almost all day. + We shall dine together in the evening. I shall read you +something that interests you. Then we shall talk: I shall tell you +about my life in the Caucasus; you will give me reminiscences of my +father and mother; you will tell me some of those "terrible +stories" to which we used to listen in the old days with frightened +eyes and open mouths. + We shall talk about the people that we loved and who are no +more. + You will cry, and I, too; but our tears will be refreshing, +tranquilizing tears. We shall talk about my brothers, who will +visit us from time to time, and about dear Masha, who will also +spend several months every year at Yásnaya, which she loves, +with all her children. + We shall have no acquaintances; no one will come in to bore us +with gossip. + It is a wonderful dream; but that is not all that I let myself +dream of. + I shall be married. My wife will be gentle, kind, and +affectionate; she will love you as I do; we shall have children who +will call you granny; you will live in the big house, in the same +room on the top floor where my grandmother lived before. + The whole house will be run on the same lines as it was in my +father's time, and we shall begin the same life over again, but +with a change of rôles. + + You will take my grandmother's place, but you will be better +still than she was; I shall take my father's place, though I can +never hope to be worthy of the honor. + My wife will take my mother's place, and the children ours. + Masha will fill the part of both my aunts, except for their +sorrow; and there will even be Gasha there to take the place of +Prashovya Ilyínitchna. + The only thing lacking will be some one to take the part you +played in the life of our family. We shall never find such a noble +and loving heart as yours. There is no one to succeed you. + There will be three new faces that will appear among us from +time to time: my brothers, especially one who will often be with +us, Nikólenka, who will be an old bachelor, bald, retired, +always the same kindly, noble fellow. + + Just ten years after this letter, my father married, and +almost all his dreams were realized, just as he had wished. Only +the big house, with his grandmother's room, was missing, and his +brother Nikólenka, with the dirty hands, for he died two +years before, in 1860. In his family life my father witnessed a +repetition of the life of his parents, and in us children he sought +to find a repetition of himself and his brothers. We were brought +up as regular gentlefolk, proud of our social position and holding +aloof from all the outer world. Everything that was not us was +below us, and therefore unworthy of imitation. I knew that my +father felt very earnestly about the <p 562> chastity of young +people; I knew how much strength he laid on purity. An early +marriage seemed to me the best solution of the difficult question +that must harass every thoughtful boy when he attains to man's +estate. + Two or three years later, when I was eighteen and we were +living in Moscow, I fell in love with a young lady I knew, my +present wife, and went almost every Saturday to her father's house. + My father knew, but said nothing. One day when he was going +out for a walk I asked if I might go with him. As I very seldom +went for walks with him in Moscow, he guessed that I wanted to have +a serious talk with him about something, and after walking some +distance in silence, evidently feeling that I was shy about it and +did not like to break the ice, he suddenly began: + "You seem to go pretty often to the F----s'." + I said that I was very fond of the eldest daughter. + "Oh, do you want to marry her?" + "Yes." + "Is she a good girl? Well, mind you don't make a mistake, and +don't be false to her," he said with a curious gentleness and +thoughtfulness. + I left him at once and ran back home, delighted, along the +Arbat. I was glad that I had told him the truth, and his +affectionate and cautious way of taking it strengthened my +affection both for him, to whom I was boundlessly grateful for his +cordiality, and for her, whom I loved still more warmly from that +moment, and to whom I resolved still more fervently never to be +untrue. + My father's tactfulness toward us amounted almost to timidity. +There were certain questions which he could never bring himself to +touch on for fear of causing us pain. I shall never forget how +once in Moscow I found him sitting writing at the table in my room +when I dashed in suddenly to change my clothes. + My bed stood behind a screen, which hid him from me. + When he heard my footsteps he said, without looking round: + "Is that you, Ilyá?" + "Yes, it's I." + "Are you alone? Shut the door. There's no one to hear us, +and we can't see each other, so we shall not feel ashamed. Tell +me, did you ever have anything to do with women?" + When I said no, I suddenly heard him break out sobbing, like +a little child. + I sobbed and cried, too, and for a long time we stayed weeping +tears of joy, with the screen between us, and we were neither of us +ashamed, but both so joyful that I look on that moment as one of +the happiest in my whole life. + No arguments or homilies could ever have effected what the +emotion I experienced at that moment did. Such tears as those shed +by a father of sixty can never be forgotten even in moments of the +strongest temptation. + My father observed my inward life most attentively between the +ages of sixteen and twenty, noted all my doubts and hesitations, +encouraged me in my good impulses, and often found fault with me +for inconsistency. + I still have some of his letters written at that time. Here +are two: + + I had just written you, my dear friend Ilyá, a letter +that was true to my own feelings, but, I am afraid, unjust, and I +am not sending it. I said unpleasant things in it, but I have no +right to do so. I do not know you as I should like to and as I +ought to know you. That is my fault. And I wish to remedy it. I +know much in you that I do not like, but I do not know everything. +As for your proposed journey home, I think that in your position +of student, not only student of a gymnase, but at the age of study, +it is better to gad about as little as possible; moreover, all +useless expenditure of money that you can easily refrain from is +immoral, in my opinion, and in yours, too, if you only consider it. +If you come, I shall be glad for my own sake, so long as you are +not inseparable from G----. + Do as you think best. But you must work, both with your head, +thinking and reading, and with your heart; that is, find out for +yourself what is really good and what is bad, although it seems to +be good. I kiss you. + L. T. + +Dear Friend Ilyá: + There is always somebody or something that prevents me from +answering your two letters, which are important and dear to me, +especially the last. First it was Baturlín, <p 563> then +bad health, insomnia, then the arrival of D----, the friend of +H---- that I wrote you about. He is sitting at tea talking to the +ladies, neither understanding the other; so I left them, and want +to write what little I can of all that I think about you. + Even supposing that S---- A---- demands too much of you,¹ +there is no harm in waiting; especially from the point of view of +fortifying your opinions, your faith. That is the one important +thing. If you don't, it is a fearful disaster to put off from one +shore and not reach the other. + The one shore is an honest and good life, for your own delight +and the profit of others. But there is a bad life, too--a life so +sugared, so common to all, that if you follow it, you do not notice +that it is a bad life, and suffer only in your conscience, if you +have one; but if you leave it, and do not reach the real shore, you +will be made miserable by solitude and by the reproach of having +deserted your fellows, and you will be ashamed. In short, I want +to say that it is out of the question to want to be rather good; it +is out of the question to jump into the water unless you know how +to swim. One must be truthful and wish to be good with all one's +might, too. Do you feel this in you? The drift of what I say is +that we all know what <i>Princess Márya +Alexévna's</i>² verdict about your marriage would be: +that if young people marry without a sufficient fortune, it means +children, poverty, getting tired of each other in a year or two; in +ten years, quarrels, want--hell. And in all this <i>Princess +Márya Alexévna</i> is perfectly right and plays the +true prophet, unless these young people who are getting married +have another purpose, their one and only one, unknown to +<i>Princess Márya Alexévna,</i> and that not a +brainish purpose, not one recognized by the intellect, but one +that gives life its color and the attainment of which is more +moving than any other. If you have this, good; marry at once, and +give the lie to <i>Princess Márya Alexévna</i>. If +not, it is a hundred to one that your marriage will lead to nothing +but misery. I am speaking to you from the bottom of my heart. +Receive my words into the bottom of yours, and weigh them well. +Besides love for you as a son, I have love for you also as a man +standing at the cross-ways. I kiss you and Lyólya and +Nolétchka and Seryózha, if he is back. We are all +alive and well. + + The following letter belongs to the same period: + + Your letter to Tánya has arrived, my dear friend +Ilyá, and I see that you are still advancing toward that +purpose which you set up for yourself; and I want to write to you +and to her--for no doubt you tell her everything--what I think +about it. Well, I think about it a great deal, with joy and with +fear mixed. This is what I think. If one marries in order to +enjoy oneself more, no good will ever come of it. To set up as +one's main object, ousting everything else, marriage, union with +the being you love, is a great mistake. And an obvious one, if you +think about it. Object, marriage. Well, you marry; and what then? +If you had no other object in life before your marriage, it will be +twice as hard to find one. + As a rule, people who are getting married completely forget +this. + So many joyful events await them in the future, in wedlock and +the arrival of children, that those events seem to constitute life +itself. But this is indeed a dangerous illusion. + If parents merely live from day to day, begetting children, +and have no purpose in life, they are only putting off the question +of the purpose of life and that punishment which is allotted to +people who live without knowing why; they are only putting it off +and not escaping it, because they will have to bring up their +children and guide their steps, but they will have nothing to guide +them by. And then the parents lose their human qualities and the +happiness which depends on the possession of them, and turn into +mere breeding cattle. + That is why I say that people who are proposing to marry +because their life <i>seems</i> to them to be full must more than +ever set themselves to think and make clear to their own minds for +the sake of what each of them lives. + And in order to make this clear, you must consider the +circumstances in which you live, your past. Reckon up what you +consider + + ¹I had written to my father that my fiancée's +mother would not let me marry for two years. + ²My father took Griboyéhof's <i>Princess +Márya Alexévna</i> as a type. The allusion here is +to the last words of Griboyéhof's famous comedy, "The +Misfortune of Cleverness," "What will <i>Princess Márya +Alexévna</i> say?" +<p 564> +important and what unimportant in life. Find out what you believe +in; that is, what you look on as eternal and immutable truth, and +what you will take for your guide in life. And not only find out, +but make clear to your own mind, and try to practise or to learn to +practise in your daily life; because until you practise what you +believe you cannot tell whether you believe it or not. + I know your faith, and that faith, or those sides of it which +can be expressed in deeds, you must now more than ever make clear +to your own mind, by putting them into practice. + Your faith is that your welfare consists in loving people and +being loved by them. For the attainment of this end I know of +three lines of action in which I perpetually exercise myself, in +which one can never exercise oneself enough and which are specially +necessary to you now. + First, in order to be able to love people and to be loved by +them, one must accustom oneself to expect as little as possible +from them, and that is very hard work; for if I expect much, and +am often disappointed, I am inclined rather to reproach them than +to love them. + Second, in order to love people not in words, but in deed, one +must train oneself to do what benefits them. That needs still +harder work, especially at your age, when it is one's natural +business to be studying. + Third, in order to love people and to b. l. b. t.,¹ one +must train oneself to gentleness, humility, the art of bearing with +disagreeable people and things, the art of behaving to them so as +not to offend any one, of being able to choose the least offense. +And this is the hardest work of all--work that never ceases from +the time you wake till the time you go to sleep, and the most +joyful work of all, because day after day you rejoice in your +growing success in it, and receive a further reward, unperceived +at first, but very joyful after, in being loved by others. + So I advise you, Friend Ilyá, and both of you, to live +and to think as sincerely as you can, because it is the only way +you can discover if you are really going along the same road, and +whether it is wise to join hands or not; and at the same time, if +you are sincere, you must be making your future ready. + Your purpose in life must not be the joy of wedlock, but, by +your life to bring more love and truth into the world. The object +of marriage is to help one another in the attainment of that +purpose. + The vilest and most selfish life is the life of the people who +have joined together only in order to enjoy life; and the highest +vocation in the world is that of those who live in order to serve +God by bringing good into the world, and who have joined together +for that very purpose. Don't mistake half-measures for the real +thing. Why should a man not choose the highest? Only when you +have chosen the highest, you must set your whole heart on it, and +not just a little. Just a little leads to nothing. There, I am +tired of writing, and still have much left that I wanted to say. +I kiss you. + + + HELP FOR THE FAMINE-STRICKEN + +AFTER my father had come to the conclusion that it was not only +useless to help people with money, but immoral, the part he took in +distributing food among the peasants during the famines of 1890, +1891, and 1898 may seem to have shown inconsistency and +contradiction of thought. + "If a horseman sees that his horse is tired out, he must not +remain seated on its back and hold up its head, but simply get +off," he used to say, condemning all the charities of the well-fed +people who sit on the back of the working classes, continue to +enjoy all the benefits of their privileged position, and merely +give from their superfluity. + He did not believe in the good of such charity and considered +it a form of self-hallucination, all the more harmful because +people thereby acquire a sort of moral right to continue that idle, +aristocratic life and get to go on increasing the poverty of the +people. + In the autumn of 1890 my father thought of writing an article +on the famine, which had then spread over nearly all Russia. + Although from the newspapers and from the accounts brought by +those who came from the famine-stricken parts he already knew about +the extent of the peasantry's disaster, nevertheless, when his old +friend Ivánovitch Rayóvsky called on him at +Yásnaya Polyána and proposed that he should drive +through to the Dankóvski + + ¹Be loved by them. +<p 565> +District with him in order to see the state of things in the +villages for himself, he readily agreed, and went with him to his +property at Begitchóvka. + He went there with the intention of staying only for a day or +two; but when he saw what a call there was for immediate measures, +he at once set to work to help Rayóvsky, who had already +instituted several kitchens in the villages, in relieving the +distress of the peasantry, at first on a small scale, and then, +when big subscriptions began to pour in from every side, on a +continually increasing one. The upshot of it was that he devoted +two whole years of his life to the work. + It is wrong to think that my father showed any inconsistency +in this matter. He did not delude himself for a moment into +thinking he was engaged on a virtuous and momentous task, but when +he saw the sufferings of the people, he simply could not bear to go +on living comfortably at Yásnaya or in Moscow any longer, +but had to go out and help in order to relieve his own feelings. +Once he wrote: + + There is much about it that is not what it ought to be; there +is S. A.'s money¹ and the subscriptions; there is the relation +of those who feed and those who are fed. <i>There is sin without +end,</i> but I cannot stay at home and write. I feel the necessity +of taking part in it, of doing something. + + Six years later I worked again at the same job with my father +in Tchornski and Mtsenski districts. + After the bad crops of the two preceding years it became clear +by the beginning of the winter of 1898 that a new famine was +approaching in our neighborhood, and that charitable assistance to +the peasantry would be needed. I turned to my father for help. By +the spring he had managed to collect some money, and at the +beginning of April he came himself to see me. + I must say that my father, who was very economical by nature, +was extraordinarily cautious and, I may say, even parsimonious in +charitable matters. It is of course easy to understand, if one +considers the unlimited confidence which he enjoyed among the +subscribers and the great moral responsibility which he could not +but feel toward them. So that before undertaking anything he had +himself to be fully convinced of the necessity of giving aid. + The day after his arrival, we saddled a couple of horses and +rode out. We rode as we had ridden together twenty years before, +when we went out coursing with our greyhounds; that is, across +country, over the fields. + It was all the same to me which way we rode, as I believed +that all the neighboring villages were equally distressed, and +my father, for the sake of old memories, wanted to revisit +Spásskoye Lyutovinóvo, which was only six miles from +me, and where he had not been since Turgénieff's death. On +the way there I remember he told me all about Turgénieff's +mother, who was famous through all the neighborhood for her +remarkable intelligence, energy, and craziness. I do not know that +he ever saw her himself, or whether he was telling me only the +reports that he had heard. + As we rode across the Turgénieff's [sic] park, he +recalled in passing how of old he and Ivan Sergéyevitch had +disputed which park was best, Spásskoye or Yásnaya +Polyána. I asked him: + "And now which do you think?" + "Yásnaya Polyána <i>is</i> the best, though this +is very fine, very fine indeed." + In the village we visited the head-man's and two or three +other cottages, and came away disappointed. There was no famine. + The peasants, who had been endowed at the emancipation with a +full share of good land, and had enriched themselves since by +wage-earnings, were hardly in want at all. It is true that some of +the yards were badly stocked; but there was none of that acute +degree of want which amounts to famine and which strikes the eye at +once. + I even remember my father reproaching me a little for having +sounded the alarm when there was no sufficient cause for it, and +for a little while I felt rather ashamed and awkward before him. + Of course when he talked to the peasants he asked each of them +if he remembered Turgénieff and eagerly picked up anything +they had to say about him. Some of the old men remembered him and +spoke of him with great affection. + + ¹His wife's. +<p 566> + + MY FATHER'S ILLNESS IN THE CRIMEA + +IN the autumn of 1901 my father was attacked by persistent +feverishness, and the doctors advised him to spend the winter in +the Crimea. Countess Panina kindly lent him her Villa Gaspra, near +Koréiz, and he spent the winter there. + Soon after his arrival, he caught cold and had two illnesses +one after the other, enteric fever and inflammation of the lungs. +At one time his condition was so bad that the doctors had hardly +any hope that he would ever rise from his bed again. Despite the +fact that his temperature went up very high, he was conscious all +the time; he dictated some reflections every day, and deliberately +prepared for death. + The whole family was with him, and we all took turns in +helping to nurse him. I look back with pleasure on the nights when +it fell to me to be on duty by him, and I sat in the balcony by +the open window, listening to his breathing and every sound in his +room. My chief duty, as the strongest of the family, was to lift +him up while the sheets were being changed. When they were making +the bed, I had to hold him in my arms like a child. + I remember how my muscles quivered one day with the exertion. +He looked at me with astonishment and said: + "You surely don't find me heavy? What nonsense!" + I thought of the day when he had given me a bad time at riding +in the woods as a boy, and kept asking, "You're not tired?" + Another time during the same illness he wanted me to carry him +down-stairs in my arms by the winding stone staircase. + "Pick me up as they do a baby and carry me." + He had not a grain of fear that I might stumble and kill him. +It was all I could do to insist on his being carried down in an +arm-chair by three of us. + Was my father afraid of death? + It is impossible to answer the question in one word. With his +tough constitution and physical strength, he always instinctively +fought not only against death, but against old age. Till the last +year of his life he never gave in, but always did everything for +himself and even rode on horseback. + To suppose, therefore, that he had no instinctive fear of +death is out of the question. He had that fear, and in a very +high degree, but he was constantly fighting to overcome it. + Did he succeed? + I can answer definitely yes. During his illness he talked a +great deal of death and prepared himself for it firmly and +deliberately. When he felt that he was getting weaker, he wished +to say good-by to everybody, and he called us all separately to his +bedside, one after the other, and gave his last words of advice to +each. He was so weak that he spoke in a half-whisper, and when he +had said good-by to one, he had to rest for a while and collect his +strength for the rest. + When my turn came, he said as nearly as I can remember: + "You are still young and strong and tossed by storms of +passion. You have not therefore yet been able to think over the +chief questions of life. But this stage will pass. I am sure of +it. When the time comes, believe me, you will find the truth in +the teachings of the Gospel. I am dying peacefully simply because +I have come to know that teaching and believe in it. May God grant +you this knowledge soon! Good-by." + I kissed his hand and left the room quietly. When I got to +the front door, I rushed to a lonely stone tower, and there sobbed +my heart out in the darkness like a child. Looking round at last, +I saw that some one else was sitting on the staircase near me, also +crying. + So I said farewell to my father years before his death, and +the memory of it is dear to me, for I know that if I had seen him +before his death at Astapova he would have said just the same to +me. + To return to the question of death, I will say that so far +from being afraid of it, in his last days he often desired it; he +was more interested in it than afraid of it. This "greatest of +mysteries" interested him to such a degree that his interest came +near to love. How eagerly he listened to accounts of the death of +his friends, Turgénieff, Gay, Leskóf,¹ +Zhemtchúzhnikof² and others! He inquired after the +smallest matters; no detail, however trifling in appearance, was +without its interest and importance to him. + + ¹A novelist, died 1895. + ²One of the authors of "Junker Schmidt." +<p 567> + His "Circle of Reading," November 7, the day he died, is +devoted entirely to thoughts on death. + "Life is a dream, death is an awakening," he wrote, while in +expectation of that awakening. + Apropos of the "Circle of Reading," I cannot refrain from +relating a characteristic incident which I was told by one of my +sisters. + When my father had made up his mind to compile that collection +of the sayings of the wise, to which he gave the name of "Circle +of Reading," he told one of his friends about it. + A few days afterward this friend came to see him again, and at +once told him that he and his wife had been thinking over his +scheme for the new book and had come to the conclusion that he +ought to call it "For Every Day," instead of "Circle of Reading." + To this my father replied that he preferred the title "Circle +of Reading" because the word "circle" suggested the idea of +continuous reading, which was what he meant to express by the +title. + Half an hour later the friend came across the room to him and +repeated exactly the same remark again. This time my father made +no reply. In the evening, when the friend was preparing to go +home, as he was saying good-by to my father, he held his hand in +his and began once more: + "Still, I must tell you, Lyoff Nikolaievich, that I and my +wife have been thinking it over, and we have come to the +conclusion," and so on, word for word the same. + "No, no, I want to die--to die as soon as possible," groaned +my father when he had seen the friend off. + "Isn't it all the same whether it's 'Circle of Reading' or +'For Every Day'? No, it's time for me to die: I cannot live like +this any longer." + And, after all, in the end, one of the editions of the sayings +of the wise was called "For Every Day" instead of "Circle of +Reading." + "Ah, my dear, ever since this Mr. ---- turned up, I really +don't know which of Lyoff Nikolaievich's writings are by Lyoff +Nikolaievich and which are by Mr. ----!" murmured our old friend, +the pure-hearted and far from malicious Márya +Alexandróvna Schmidt. + This sort of intrusion into my father's work as an author +bore, in the "friend's" language, the modest title of "corrections +beforehand," and there is no doubt that Márya +Alexandróvna was right, for no one will ever know where what +my father wrote ends and where his concessions to Mr. ----'s +persistent "corrections beforehand" begin, all the more as this +careful adviser had the forethought to arrange that when my father +answered his letters he was always to return him the letters they +were answers to.¹ + Besides the desire for death that my father displayed, in the +last years of his life he cherished another dream, which he made no +secret of his hope of realizing, and that was the desire to suffer +for his convictions. The first impulse in this direction was given +him by the persecution on the part of the authorities to which, +during his lifetime, many of his friends and fellow-thinkers were +subjected. + When he heard of any one being put in jail or deported for +disseminating his writings, he was so disturbed about it that one +was really sorry for him. I remember my arrival at Yásnaya +some days after Gúsef's arrest.² I stayed two days with +my father, and heard of nothing but Gúsef. As if there were +nobody in the world but Gúsef! I must confess that, sorry +as I was for Gúsef, who was shut up at the time in the local +prison at Krapivna, I harbored a most wicked feeling of resentment +at my father's paying so little attention to me and the rest of +those about him and being so absorbed in the thought of +Gúsef. + I willingly acknowledge that I was wrong in entertaining this +narrow-minded feeling. If I had entered fully into what my father +was feeling, I should have seen this at the time. + As far back as 1896, in consequence of the arrest of a doctor, +Miss N----, in Tula, my father wrote a long letter to Muravyof, the +Minister of Justice, in which he spoke of the "unreasonableness, +uselessness, and cruelty of the measures + + ¹The curious may be disposed to trace to some such +"corrections beforehand" the remarkable discrepancy of style and +matter which distinguishes some of Tolstoy's later works, published +after his death by Mr. Tchertkof and his literary executors. + ²Tolstoy's private secretary, arrested and banished in +1908. +<p 568> +taken by the Government against those who disseminate these +forbidden writings," and begged him to "direct the measures taken +to punish or intimidate the perpetrators of the evil, or to put an +end to it, against the man whom you regard as the real instigator +of it . . . all the more, as I assure you beforehand, that I shall +continue without ceasing till my death to do what the Government +considers evil and what I consider my sacred duty before God." + As every one knows, neither this challenge nor the others that +followed it led to any result, and the arrests and deportations of +those associated with him still went on. + My father felt himself morally responsible toward all those +who suffered on his account, and every year new burdens were laid +on his conscience. + + + MASHA'S DEATH + +As I reach the description of the last days of my father's life, I +must once more make it clear that what I write is based only on the +personal impressions I received in my periodical visits to +Yásnaya Polyána. + Unfortunately, I have no rich shorthand material to rely on, +such as Gúsef and Bulgákof had for their memoirs, and +more especially Dushán Petróvitch Makowicki, who is +preparing, I am told, a big and conscientious work, full of truth +and interest. + In November, 1906, my sister Masha died of inflammation of the +lungs. It is a curious thing that she vanished out of life with +just as little commotion as she had passed through it. Evidently +this is the lot of all the pure in heart. + No one was particularly astonished by her death. I remember +that when I received the telegram, I felt no surprise. It seemed +perfectly natural to me. Masha had married a kinsman of ours, +Prince Obolénski; she lived on her own estate at +Pirogóvo, twenty-one miles from us, and spent half the year +with her husband at Yásnaya. She was very delicate and had +constant illnesses. + When I arrived at Yásnaya the day after her death, I +was aware of an atmosphere of exaltation and prayerful emotion +about the whole family, and it was then I think for the first time +that I realized the full grandeur and beauty of death. + I definitely felt that by her death Masha, so far from having +gone away from us, had come nearer to us, and had been, as it were, +welded to us forever in a way that she never could have been during +her lifetime. + I observed the same frame of mind in my father. He went about +silent and woebegone, summoning all his strength to battle with his +own sorrow; but I never heard him utter a murmur of a complaint, +only words of tender emotion. When the coffin was carried to the +church he changed his clothes and went with the cortège. +When he reached the stone pillars he stopped us, said farewell to +the departed, and walked home along the avenue. I looked after him +and watched him walk away across the wet, thawing snow with his +short, quick old man's steps, turning his toes out at a sharp +angle, as he always did, and never once looking round. + My sister Masha had held a position of great importance in my +father's life and in the life of the whole family. Many a time in +the last few years have we had occasion to think of her and to +murmur sadly: "If only Masha had been with us! If only Masha had +not died!" + In order to explain the relations between Masha and my father +I must turn back a considerable way. There was one distinguishing +and, at first sight, peculiar trait in my father's character, due +perhaps to the fact that he grew up without a mother, and that was +that all exhibitions of tenderness were entirely foreign to him. + I say "tenderness" in contradistinction to heartiness. +Heartiness he had and in a very high degree. + His description of the death of my Uncle Nikolái is +characteristic in this connection. In a letter to his other +brother, Sergéi Nikoláyevitch, in which he described +the last day of his brother's life, my father tells how he helped +him to undress. + "He submitted, and became a different man. . . . He had a +word of praise for everybody, and said to me, 'Thanks, my friend.' +You understand the significance of the words as between us two." + It is evident that in the language of the Tolstoy brothers the +phrase "my friend" was an expression of tenderness beyond which +imagination could not go. The words astonished my father even on +the lips of his dying brother. <p 569> + During all his lifetime I never received any mark of +tenderness from him whatever. + He was not fond of kissing children, and when he did so in +saying good morning or good night, he did it merely as a duty. + It is therefore easy to understand that he did not provoke any +display of tenderness toward himself, and that nearness and +dearness with him were never accompanied by any outward +manifestations. + It would never have come into my head, for instance, to walk +up to my father and kiss him or to stroke his hand. I was partly +prevented also from that by the fact that I always looked up to him +with awe, and his spiritual power, his greatness, prevented me from +seeing in him the mere man--the man who was so plaintive and weary +at times, the feeble old man who so much needed warmth and rest. + The only person who could give him that warmth was Masha. + She would go up to him, stroke his hand, caress him, and say +something affectionate, and you could see that he liked it, was +happy, and even responded in kind. It was as if he became a +different man with her. Why was it that Masha was able to do this, +while no one else even dared to try? If any other of us had done +it, it would have seemed unnatural, but Masha could do it with +perfect simplicity and sincerity. + I do not mean to say that others about my father loved him +less than Masha; not at all; but the display of love for him was +never so warm and at the same time so natural with any one else as +with her. + So that with Masha's death my father was deprived of this +natural source of warmth, which, with advancing years, had become +more and more of a necessity for him. + Another and still greater power that she possessed was her +remarkably delicate and sensitive conscience. This trait in her +was still dearer to my father than her caresses. + How good she was at smoothing away all misunderstandings! How +she always stood up for those who were found any fault with, justly +or unjustly! It was all the same to her. Masha could reconcile +everybody and everything. + During the last years of his life my father's health +perceptibly grew worse. Several times he had the most sudden and +inexplicable sort of fainting fits, from which he used to recover +the next day, but completely lost his memory for a time. + Seeing my brother Andréi's children, who were staying +at Yásnaya, in the <i>zala</i> one day, he asked with some +surprise, "Whose children are these?" Meeting my wife, he said, +"Don't be offended, my dear; I know that I am very fond of you, but +I have quite forgotten who you are"; and when he went up to the +<i>zala</i> after one of these fainting fits, he looked round with +an astonished air and said, "Where's my brother Nítenka." +Nítenka had died fifty years before. + The day following all traces of the attack would disappear. + During one of these fainting fits my brother Sergéi, in +undressing my father, found a little note-book on him. He put it +in his own pocket, and next day, when he came to see my father, he +handed it back to him, telling him that he had not read it. + "There would have been no harm in <i>your</i> seeing it," said +my father, as he took it back. + This little diary in which he wrote down his most secret +thoughts and prayers was kept "for himself alone," and he never +showed it to any one. I saw it after my father's death. It is +impossible to read it without tears. + It is curious that the sudden decay of my father's memory +displayed itself only in the matter of real facts and people. He +was entirely unaffected in his literary work, and everything that +he wrote down to the last days of his life is marked by his +characteristic logicalness and force. It may be that the reason he +forgot the details of real life was because he was too deeply +absorbed in his abstract work. + My wife was at Yásnaya Polyána in October, and +when she came home she told me that there was something wrong +there. "Your mother is nervous and hysterical; your father is in +a silent and gloomy frame of mind." + I was very busy with my office work, but made up my mind to +devote my first free day to going and seeing my father and mother. + When I got to Yásnaya, my father had already left it. +<p 570> + I paid Aunt Masha a visit some little time after my father's +funeral. We sat together in her comfortable little cell, and she +repeated to me once more in detail the oft-repeated story of my +father's last visit to her. + "He sat in that very arm-chair where you are sitting now, and +how he cried!" she said. + "When Sasha arrived with her girl friend, they set to work +studying this map of Russia and planning out a route to the +Caucasus. Lyovótchka sat there thoughtful and melancholy. + "'Never mind, Papa; it'll be all right,' said Sasha, trying to +encourage him. + "'Ah, you women, you women!' answered her father, bitterly. +'How can it ever be all right?' + "I so much hoped that he would settle down here; it would just +have suited him. And it was his own idea, too; he had even taken +a cottage in the village," Aunt Masha sadly recalled. + "When he left me to go back to the hotel where he was staying, +it seemed to me that he was rather calmer. + "When he said good-by, he even made some joke about his having +come to the wrong door. + "I certainly would never have imagined that he would go away +again that same night." + It was a grievous trial for Aunt Masha when the old confessor +Iosif, who was her spiritual director, forbade her to pray for her +dead brother because he had been excommunicated. She was too +broad-minded to be able to reconcile herself to the harsh +intolerance of the church, and for a time she was honestly +indignant. Another priest to whom she applied also refused her +request. + Márya Nikoláyevna could not bring herself to +disobey her spiritual fathers, but at the same time she felt that +she was not really obeying their injunction, for she prayed for him +all the same, in thought, if not in words. + There is no knowing how her internal discord would have ended +if her father confessor, evidently understanding the moral torment +she was suffering, had not given her permission to pray for her +brother, but only in her cell and in solitude, so as not to lead +others astray. + + + MY FATHER'S WILL. CONCLUSION + +ALTHOUGH my father had long since renounced the copyright in all +his works written after 1883, and although, after having made all +his real estate over to his children, he had, as a matter of fact, +no property left, still he could not but be aware that his life was +far from corresponding to his principles, and this consciousness +perpetually preyed upon his mind. One has only to read some of his +posthumous works attentively to see that the idea of leaving home +and radically altering his whole way of life had presented itself +to him long since and was a continual temptation to him. + This was the cherished dream that always allured him, but +which he did not think himself justified in putting into practice. + The life of the Christian must be a "reasonable and happy life +<i>in all possible circumstances,"</i> he used to say as he +struggled with the temptation to go away, and gave up his own soul +for others. + I remember reading in Gúsef's memoirs how my father +once, in conversation with Gusoryóf, the peasant, who had +made up his mind to leave his home for religious reasons, said, "My +life is a hundred thousand times more loathsome than yours, but yet +I cannot leave it." + I shall not enumerate all the letters of abuse and amazement +which my father received from all sides, upbraiding him with +luxury, with inconsistency, and even with torturing his peasants. +It is easy to imagine what an impression they made on him. + He said there was good reason to revile him; he called their +abuse "a bath for the soul," but internally he suffered from the +"bath," and saw no way out of his difficulties. He bore his cross, +and it was in this self-renunciation that his power consisted, +though many either could not or would not understand it. He alone, +despite all those about him, knew that this cross was laid on him +not of man, but of God; and while he was strong, he loved his +burden and shared it with none. + Just as thirty years before he had been haunted by the +temptation to suicide, so now he struggled with a new and more +powerful temptation, that of flight. + A few days before he left Yásnaya he <p 571> called on +Márya Alexandróvna Schmidt at Ovsyanniki and +confessed to her that he wanted to go away. + The old lady held up her hands in horror and said: + "Gracious Heavens, Lyoff Nikolaievich, have you come to such +a pitch of weakness?" + When I learned, on October 28, 1910, that my father had left +Yásnaya, the same idea occurred to me, and I even put it +into words in a letter I sent to him at Shamerdino by my sister +Sasha. + I did not know at the time about certain circumstances which +have since made a great deal clear to me that was obscure before. + From the moment of my father's death till now I have been +racking my brains to discover what could have given him the impulse +to take that last step. What power could compel him to yield in +the struggle in which he had held firmly and tenaciously for many +years? What was the last drop, the last grain of sand that turned +the scales, and sent him forth to search for a new life on the very +edge of the grave? + Could he really have fled from home because the wife that he +had lived with for forty-eight years had developed neurasthenia and +at one time showed certain abnormalities characteristic of that +malady? Was that like the man who so loved his fellows and so well +knew the human heart? Or did he suddenly desire, when he was +eighty-three, and weak and helpless, to realize the idea of a +pilgrim's life? + If so, why did he take my sister Sasha and Dr. Makowicki with +him? He could not but know that in their company he would be just +as well provided with all the necessaries of life as he would have +been at Yásnaya Polyána. It would have been the most +palpable self-deception. + Knowing my father as I did, I felt that the question of his +flight was not so simple as it seemed to others, and the problem +lay long unsolved before me until it was suddenly made clear by the +will that he left behind him. + I remember how, after N. S. Leskóf's death, my father +read me his posthumous instructions with regard to a pauper +funeral, with no speeches at the grave, and so on, and how the +idea of writing his own will then came into his head for the +first time. + His first will was written in his diary, on March 27, +1895.¹ + The fourth paragraph, to which I wish to call particular +attention, contains a request to his next of kin to transfer the +right of publishing his writings to society at large, or, in other +words, to renounce the copyright of them. + "But I only request it, and do not direct it. It is a good +thing to do. And it will be good for you to do it; but if you do +not do it, that is your affair. It means that you are not yet +ready to do it. The fact that my writings have been bought and +sold during these last ten years has been the most painful thing in +my whole life to me." + Three copies were made of this will, and they were kept by my +sister Masha, my brother Sergéi, and Tchertkof. + I knew of its existence, but I never saw it till after my +father's death, and I never inquired of anybody about the details. + I knew my father's views about copyright, and no will of his +could have added anything to what I knew. I knew, moreover, that +this will was not properly executed according to the forms of law, +and personally I was glad of that, for I saw in it another proof of +my father's confidence in his family. I need hardly add that I +never doubted that my father's wishes would be carried out. + My sister Masha, with whom I once had a conversation on the +subject, was of the same opinion. + In 1909 my father stayed with Mr. Tchertkof at Krekshin, and +there for the first time he wrote a formal will, attested by the +signature of witnesses. How this will came to be written I do not +know, and I do not intend to discuss it. It afterward appeared +that it also was imperfect from a legal point of view, and in +October, 1909, it had all to be done again. + As to the writing of the third we are fully informed by Mr. F. +Strakhof in an article which he published in the St. Petersburg +"Gazette" on November 6, 1911. + Mr. Strakhof left Moscow at night. He had calculated on +Sófya Andréyevna,¹ whose presence at +Yásnaya Polyána was highly inexpedient for the +business on + + ¹Five weeks after Leskóf's death. + ²The Countess Tolstoy. +<p 572> +which he was bound, being still in Moscow. + The business in question, as was made clear in the preliminary +consultation which V. G. Tchertkof held with N. K. Muravyof, the +solicitor, consisted in getting fresh signatures from Lyoff +Nikolaievich, whose great age made it desirable to make sure, +without delay, of his wishes being carried out by means of a more +unassailable legal document. Strakhof brought the draft of the +will with him, and laid it before Lyoff Nikolaievich. After +reading the paper through, he at once wrote under it that he agreed +with its purport, and then added, after a pause: + "All this business is very disagreeable to me, and it is +unnecessary. To insure the propagation of my ideas by taking all +sorts of measures--why, no word can perish without leaving its +trace, if it expresses a truth, and if the man who utters it +believes profoundly in its truth. But all these outward means for +insuring it only come of our disbelief in what we utter." + And with these words Lyoff Nikolaievich left the study. + Thereupon Mr. Strakhof began to consider what he must do next, +whether he should go back with empty hands, or whether he should +argue it out. + He decided to argue it out, and endeavored to explain to my +father how painful it would be for his friends after his death to +hear people blaming him for not having taken any steps, despite his +strong opinion on the subject, to see that his wishes were carried +out, and for having thereby helped to transfer his copyrights to +the members of his family. + Tolstoy promised to think it over, and left the room again. + At dinner Sófya Andréyevna "was evidently far +from having any suspicions." When Tolstoy was not by, however, she +asked Mr. Strakhof what he had come down about. Inasmuch as Mr. +Strakhof had other affairs in hand besides the will, he told her +about one thing and another with an easy conscience. + Mr. Strakhof described a second visit to Yásnaya, when +he came to attest the same will as a witness. + When he arrived, he said: "The countess had not yet come down. +I breathed again." + Of his departure, he said: + + As I said good-by to Sófya Andréyevna, I +examined her countenance attentively. Such complete tranquillity +and cordiality toward her departing guests were written on it that +I had not the smallest doubt of her complete ignorance of what was +going on. . . . I left the house with the pleasing consciousness +of a work well done--a work that was destined to have a +considerable historic consequence. I only felt some little twinge +within, certain qualms of conscience about the conspiratorial +character of the transaction. + + But even this text of the will did not quite satisfy my +father's "friends and advisers"; it was redrafted for the fourth +and last time in July, 1910. + This last draft was written by my father himself in the +Limonovski Forest, two miles from the house, not far from Mr. +Tchertkof's estate. + Such is the melancholy history of this document, which was +destined to have historic consequences. "All this business is very +disagreeable to me, and it is unnecessary," my father said when he +signed the paper that was thrust before him. That was his real +opinion about his will, and it never altered to the end of his +days. + Is there any need of proof for that? I think one need know +very little of his convictions to have no doubt about it. + Was Lyoff Nikolaievich Tolstoy likely of his own accord to +have recourse to the protection of the law? And, if he did, was +he likely to conceal it from his wife and children? + He had been put into a position from which there was +absolutely no way out. To tell his wife was out of the question; +it would have grievously offended his friends. To have destroyed +the will would have been worse still; for his friends had suffered +for his principles morally, and some of them materially, and had +been exiled from Russia. He felt himself bound to them. + And on the top of all this were his fainting fits, his +increasing loss of memory, the clear consciousness of the approach +of death, and the continually growing nervousness of his wife, who +felt in her heart of hearts the unnatural estrangement of her +husband, and could not understand it. If she asked him what it was +that he was concealing from her, he would <p 573> either have to +say nothing or to tell her the truth. But that was impossible. + So it came about that the long-cherished dream of leaving +Yásnaya Polyána presented itself as the only means of +escape. It was certainly not in order to enjoy the full +realization of his dream that he left his home; he went away only +as a choice of evils. + "I am too feeble and too old to begin a new life," he had said +to my brother Sergéi only a few days before his departure. + Harassed, ill in body and in mind, he started forth without +any object in view, without any thought-out plan, merely in order +to hide himself somewhere, wherever it might be, and get some rest +from the moral tortures which had become insupportable to him. + "To fly, to fly!" he said in his deathbed delirium as he lay +at Astapova. + "Has papa considered that mama may not survive the separation +from him?" I asked my sister Sasha on October 29, when she was on +the point of going to join him at Shamerdino. + "Yes, he has considered all that, and still made up his mind +to go, because he thinks that nothing could be worse than the state +that things have come to here," she answered. + I confess that my explanation of my father's flight by no +means exhausts the question. Life is complex and every explanation +of a man's conduct is bound to suffer from one-sidedness. Besides, +there are circumstances of which I do not care to speak at the +present moment, in order not to cause unnecessary pain to people +still living. It may be that if those who were about my father +during the last years of his life had known what they were doing, +things would have turned out differently. + The years will pass. The accumulated incrustations which hide +the truth will pass away. Much will be wiped out and forgotten. +Among other things my father's will will be forgotten--that will +which he himself looked upon as an "unnecessary outward means." +And men will see more clearly that legacy of love and truth in +which he believed deeply, and which, according to his own words, +"cannot perish without a trace." + In conclusion I cannot refrain from quoting the opinion of one +of my kinsmen, who, after my father's death, read the diaries kept +both by my father and my mother during the autumn before Lyoff +Nikolaievich left Yásnaya Polyána. + "What a terrible misunderstanding!" he said. "Each loved the +other with such poignant affection, each was suffering all the time +on the other's behalf, and then this terrible ending! . . . I see +the hand of fate in this." + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Reminiscences of Tolstoy + |