Chapter X · NEARING THE CRISIS (continued 2)

The reader is by this time well aware of Tolstoy's devotion to music. Though it was at times crowded out of his life by other interests, he always returned to it with ardour when opportunity offered. Behrs tells us that Tolstoy generally, when playing, chose serious music.

He often sat down to the piano before beginning to work.... He always accompanied my youngest sister [Tánya] and enjoyed her singing very much. I noticed that the sensation music evoked in him expressed itself by a slight pallor and a scarcely perceptible grimace, suggestive of something like terror. Hardly a day passed in summer without my sister singing and without the piano being played. Occasionally we all sang together, and he always played the accompaniments.

As Tolstoy's spiritual crisis approached, the attraction of music for him seemed to increase, and it was about this period, that is to say in December 1876, that he made acquaintance with the composer P. I. Tschaikóvsky, who had held the post of Director of the Moscow Conservatoire, the first seeds of which Tolstoy had helped to plant nearly twenty years before.

Tschaikóvsky had from his youth up been a devoted admirer of Tolstoy, whose skill in reading the human heart appeared to him almost superhuman. He was therefore highly gratified when Tolstoy of his own accord sought his acquaintance. At first their personal intercourse did not appear to lessen the composer's reverence for the author, for on 23rd December 1876 he wrote to a friend:

Count L. N. Tolstoy spent some time here recently. He visited me several times and spent two whole evenings with me. I am tremendously flattered, and proud of the interest I have inspired in him, and for my part am completely enchanted by his ideal personality.

Tschaikóvsky induced Nicholas Rubinstein, then Director of the Moscow Conservatoire, to arrange a musical evening solely for Tolstoy, and at this concert, Rubinstein, Fitzenhagen, and Adolph Bródsky, who is now Principal of the Manchester College of Music, were among the chief performers.

One of the pieces performed by a quartet was Tschaikóvsky's 'Andante in D Major,' which so affected Tolstoy that he wept. 'Never, perhaps, in my life,' says Tschaikóvsky, 'was I so flattered, or my vanity as a composer so touched, as when Leo Nikoláyevitch, sitting next to me and listening to the quartet performing my Andante, burst into tears.'

After Tolstoy had returned to Yásnaya he wrote to Tschaikóvsky, sending him a collection of folk-songs, and saying:

I send you the songs, dear Peter Ilyítch. I have again looked them through. They will be a wonderful treasure in your hands. But for God's sake work them up and use them in a Mozart-Haydn style, and not in a Beethoven-Schumann-Berlioz, artificial way, seeking the unexpected. How much I left unsaid to you. I really said nothing of what I wanted to say. There was no time. I was enjoying myself. This last stay of mine in Moscow will remain one of the best of my reminiscences. Never have I received so precious a reward for my literary labours as on that wonderful evening.

Tschaikóvsky replied:

Count, I am sincerely grateful to you for sending the songs. I must tell you candidly that they have been taken down by an unskilful hand, and bear only traces of their pristine beauty. The chief defect is that they have been artificially squeezed and forced into a regular, measured form. Only Russian dance music has a rhythm and a regular and equally accentuated beat; but folk-ballads have of course nothing in common with dance songs. Moreover, most of these songs are, arbitrarily it seems, written in a solemn D Major, which again does not suit a real Russian song, which almost always has an indefinite tonality approximating nearest of all to ancient Church music. In general, the songs you have sent me cannot be worked up in a regular and systematic way: that is to say, one cannot make a collection of them, because for that they would have to be taken down as nearly as possible in the way in which the people perform them. That is an extremely difficult matter, demanding fine musical feeling and great historico-musical erudition. Except Balakíref, and to some extent Prokoúnin, I do not know any one competent for the task. But as material for symphonic treatment, your songs can be of use, and are even very good material, which I certainly will avail myself of in one way or other.

It is rather disappointing to find that the intercourse between these two men, each so great in his own way, and each such an admirer of the other's genius, was not continued.

Tschaikóvsky's expectations had been pitched too high, and he felt a certain disappointment that his 'demigod' was, after all, but human. He had dreaded to meet the novelist lest the latter should penetrate the secret recesses of his soul; but, says Tschaikóvsky:

He who in his writings was the deepest of heart-seers, proved in personal contact to be a man of simple, whole, and frank nature, showing very little of the omniscience I had feared.... It was plain he did not at all regard me as a subject for his observation, but simply wanted to chat about music, in which he was then interested. He took a pleasure in denying Beethoven, and plainly expressed doubts of his genius. This was a trait not at all worthy of a great man. To pull down a universally acknowledged genius to the level of one's own intelligence, is characteristic of small people.

Feeling thus, Tschaikóvsky purposely avoided meeting Tolstoy again, and even took a temporary aversion to Anna Karénina, though eventually he returned to his former admiration of Tolstoy's novels.

Tschaikóvsky was not aware of the reasons Tolstoy had for the unorthodox position he held on art generally and music in particular: reasons which it will be more in place to deal with later on, and which I have in fact already treated of at some length in a previous work, Tolstoy and his Problems. Here let it suffice to say that there is plenty of evidence to show that Tolstoy can enjoy Beethoven, and enjoy even the works of Beethoven's last period, which are the ones he criticises. There is, for instance, the episode with Mlle. Oberlender, which will be recounted later on, and we have his own statement in What is Art?:

I should mention that whatever other people understand of the productions of Beethoven's later period, I, being very susceptible to music, equally understand. For a long time I used to attune myself so as to delight in those shapeless improvisations which form the subject-matter of the works of Beethoven's later period; but I had only to consider the question of art seriously, and to compare the impression I received from Beethoven's later works with those pleasant, clear, and strong musical impressions which are transmitted, for instance, by the melodies of Bach (his arias), Haydn, Mozart, Chopin (when his melodies are not overloaded with complications and ornamentation), and of Beethoven himself in his earlier period, and above all, with the impressions produced by folk-songs,—Italian, Norwegian, or Russian,—by the Hungarian tzardas, and other such simple, clear, and powerful music, and the obscure, almost unhealthy excitement from Beethoven's later pieces that I had artificially evoked in myself was destroyed.

His work among peasant children has convinced him that the normal human being possesses capacities for the enjoyment of art; and that in most unexpected places the capacity to produce admirable art is now lying latent. That is why he sets up Brevity, Simplicity, and Sincerity as the criterions of art, and why he believes that folk-tales and folk-songs and folk-dances, the Gospel parables, such Old Testament stories as the history of Joseph, the Arabian Nights and the Christmas Carol; and music such as the tzardas, the Swanee River, the Old Hundredth, and Bach's arias, are infinitely more important to the life and well-being of humanity than King Lear or the Ninth Symphony.

Tolstoy—who had boasted of not reading newspapers, and who had lived so detached from politics and the events of contemporary history—began at this time to feel keenly interested in a question closely connected with Russia's foreign policy.

Following the insurrection in Herzegovina, another had broken out in Bulgaria in May 1876, but had been quickly suppressed by the Turks, who burnt some sixty-five villages; the Bashi-Bazouks committing unspeakable atrocities on the defenceless inhabitants. At the commencement of July, Servia and Montenegro declared war against Turkey; but, in spite of help rendered by numerous Russian volunteers, they were soon crushed by the Turks, and would have been completely at their mercy had not Russia, on 31st October, issued an ultimatum demanding an armistice, which Turkey conceded. On 10th November Alexander II made a speech in the Moscow Krémlin, in which he declared that he would act independently of the other powers unless satisfactory guarantees of reform were obtained forthwith from the Sultan. These events gradually led to the war which broke out between Russia and Turkey in April 1877.

Before this, however, in the letter of 13th November 1876, already quoted, Tolstoy wrote to Fet:

I went to Moscow to hear about the war. This whole affair agitates me greatly. It is well for those to whom it is clear; but I am frightened when I begin to reflect on all the complexity of the conditions amid which history is made, and how some Madame A.—with her vanity—becomes an indispensable cog in the whole machine!

The Russo-Turkish imbroglio led, early in 1877, to a split between Tolstoy and Katkóf. Tolstoy, at bottom and in his own original way, was certainly a reformer; and his alliance with Katkóf, who was quite reactionary, had always been rather like the yoking of an ox with an ass. At this time Katkóf was ardent for the liberation of the Slavs from Turkish tyranny, laudatory of those who volunteered for the war, and eager for the aggrandisement of Russia. Tolstoy, with his knowledge of the realities of war and his insight into the motives that actuate the men who fight, had his doubts about the heroic and self-sacrificing character of the volunteers and the purity of the patriotism of the press; and he expressed these doubts very plainly in some of the concluding chapters of Anna Karénina: as, for instance, where he makes Lévin say of 'the unanimity of the press':

'That's been explained to me: as soon as there's a war their incomes are doubled. So how can they help believing in the destinies of the people and the Slavonic races ... and all the rest of it?'

The result was that when the final chapters of the novel were appearing in the Russian Messenger during the first months of 1877, Katkóf returned some of the MS. to Tolstoy with numerous corrections and a letter saying that he could not print it unless his corrections were accepted.

Tolstoy was furious that a journalist should dare to alter a single word in his book, and in reply sent a sharp letter to Katkóf, which resulted in a rupture. Tolstoy issued the last part of Anna Karénina separately in book form and not in the magazine, besides, of course, issuing the whole work in book form, as usual; and, in the May number of his Russian Messenger, Katkóf had to wind up the story as best he could, by giving a brief summary of the concluding part.

These events throw light on the following letter to Fet:

23 March 1877.

You can't imagine how glad I am to have your approval of my writings, dear Afanásy Afanásyevitch, and in general to receive your letter. You write that the Russian Messenger has printed some one else's poem, while your Temptation lies waiting. It is the dullest and deadest editorial office in existence. They have become terribly repulsive to me, not on my own account, but for the sake of others....

My head is now better, but as it gets better it has to work that much harder. March and the beginning of April are the months when I work most, and I still continue to be under the delusion that what I am writing is very important, though I know that in a month's time I shall be ashamed to remember that I thought so. Have you noticed that a new line has now been started, and that everybody is writing poetry: very bad poetry, but they all do it. Some five new poets have introduced themselves to me lately.

The dislike Tolstoy felt of the artificially stimulated war fever (though, to do Katkóf and his friends justice, one must admit that no European Power during the last fifty years has had more justification for war than Russia had for intervening in defence of the Slav population of Turkey) was connected with the religious impulse that was beginning to reshape his whole life; but it does not appear that he actually disapproved of the war after Russia had officially commenced it. What he primarily objected to was, that private individuals should push the Government into a war.

An influence which has left its traces in the latter part of Anna Karénina (particularly Part VII, Chap. 21) was Tolstoy's intercourse, about this time, with some of the most prominent followers of Lord Radstock, who frequently visited Russia and obtained considerable influence with a number of people in certain aristocratic Petersburg circles. One of these people, Count A. P. Bóbrinsky, who had been Minister of Ways of Communication, made Tolstoy's acquaintance and had animated religious discussions with him. Both Bóbrinsky and Colonel Páshkof (another very prominent Radstockite) for a while cherished hopes of winning Tolstoy over to Evangelical Christianity, and making him the spokesman of their cause. Tolstoy, as the event proved, was quite capable of throwing himself whole-heartedly into a religious movement; but he needed a faith much more clear-cut than the scheme of Redemption by the blood of Jesus: one that faced the facts of life, dealt explicitly with the bread-and-butter problem, and told men how to regard the fact that some people have to overtax their strength without ever reaching an assured maintenance, while others have a superabundance provided for them from their birth without ever needing to do a stroke of work. His profound contempt for Evangelical doctrines flashed out twenty years later, in the 17th Chapter of Book II of Resurrection.

It was a little before this that Fet told Tolstoy the following story. Sauntering in a churchyard, he had come upon an inscription which touched him more than any epitaph he had ever read. The tombstone was in the form of an obelisk of plain grey sandstone. On one of its four sides were deeply cut the words:

Here is buried the body of the peasant girl Mary;

on another side:

Here also is buried an infant of the female sex.

On the side opposite the name of the deceased stood these words ill-spelt:

This, my dear, is the last adornment I can give thee;

and below stood the name of

Retired non-commissioned officer So-and-so.

In his next letter Tolstoy writes:

18 October 1876.

This, my dear, is the last adornment I can give thee is charming! I have told it twice, and each time my voice has broken with tears.

1877

In Tolstoy's next letter to Fet, dated 11th January, we get a glimpse of one of the reasons that led this strenuous worker to prefer a country life:

Dear Afanásy Afanásyevitch,—One does not strike or cut off the head that owns its fault! I confess that I am quite at fault towards you. But truly, in Moscow I am in a condition of irresponsibility; my nerves are out of order, the hours turn to minutes, and as though on purpose, the people I do not want turn up and prevent my seeing those whom I do want.

Among the people whom in his search for truth Tolstoy did want to know, were some of the leading scientists of that day—a day when many men thought that Darwin had opened the gateway to a knowledge which would gradually solve the mysteries of life and death, the here and the hereafter. The great literary fame Tolstoy now enjoyed made it an easy matter to make such acquaintances.

One of the scientists he got to know, was a celebrated professor of Chemistry, A. M. Boutleróf, whom to his amazement he found to be much concerned with table-turning and spiritualism; occupations Tolstoy held in contempt.

A letter to Fet, dated 14th April, gives some inkling of what was going on in Tolstoy's mind at this time:

I value every letter of yours, especially such as this last! You would hardly believe how pleased I am at what you write 'On the existence of the Deity.' I agree with it all, and should like to say much about it, but cannot in a letter, and am too busy. It is the first time you have spoken to me about the Deity—God. And I have long been thinking unceasingly about that chief problem. Do not say that one cannot think about it! One not only can, but must! In all ages the best, the real people, have thought about it. And if we cannot think of it as they did, we must find out how. Have you read Pensées de Pascal—i.e. have you read it recently with a mature head-piece? When (which God grant) you come to see me, we will talk of many things, and I will give you that book. Were I free from my novel—of which the end is already in type and I am correcting the proofs—I would at once on receipt of your letter have come to you.

In the middle of this summer Tolstoy, bringing with him N. Stráhof, paid Fet an unexpected visit. The latter had at this time engaged as governess a Mlle. Oberlender, an excellent pianist, and in his Recollections he tells us that on this visit:

The Count, a sensitive esthete by nature, was greatly taken by the piano playing of Mlle. Oberlender. He sat down to play duets with her, and they played through almost the whole of Beethoven.

Fet quotes Tolstoy's comment on the lady's performance:

'When we were young, such pianists travelled across Europe giving concerts. She reads any piece of music as you read poetry, finding just the suitable expression for each note.'

Towards the end of July, Tolstoy, accompanied by N. Stráhof, visited for the first time the Monastery of Óptin, which is situated in the Kaloúga Government, and is about 135 miles to the west of Yásnaya. A very prominent figure in the monastic world at that time was the Staretz Father Ambrose, with whom Tolstoy had some long conversations. Among others whose acquaintance Tolstoy made there, was a monk who had formerly been an officer in the Horse Guards. One of the most important of the works Tolstoy left for publication after his death, is a remarkable novel called Father Sergius, the hero of which is a man of the world who becomes a monk, acquires a reputation for sanctity, and then yields to temptation and ends as an outcast. His visits to the Óptin Monastery, which were repeated three times, supplied Tolstoy with material which many years later he utilised in that work.

At Óptin, Tolstoy had met his friend Prince Obolénsky, to whom on his return journey he paid a visit at the latter's estate of Beryósino. Here he renewed acquaintance with N. Rubinstein, who was staying with Obolénsky, and whose pianoforte playing he enjoyed intensely.

A visit which much interested Tolstoy was paid him about this time by an itinerant story-teller, expert in folk-lore, wielding beautifully the simple language of the people, such as Tolstoy loves and has utilised in his stories. He took down in writing some of this traveller's tales, and from them subsequently worked up into literary form What Men Live By, The Three Hermits (included in Twenty-three Tales), and some others. The root idea of What Men Live By is that of an angel sent by God to do penance on earth for a well-intentioned act of disobedience. It seems that it is one of the most widely disseminated of the world's legends, appearing and reappearing in the literature of many countries through many centuries.

In the latter part of 1877 a number of Turkish prisoners of war were located in an abandoned sugar-factory between Toúla and Yásnaya. Tolstoy visited them there, and found that they were fairly well treated. Being himself greatly concerned about religion, he naturally talked to them on that subject, and was much impressed when he found that each of them had a copy of the Koran in his kit.

On 6th December another son, Andrew (Andréy), was born.

All through this year, amid bustle and activity of various kinds, spiritual problems continued to torment Tolstoy, and his physical health began to show signs of the strain. Here is a note to Fet, dated 2nd September:

Just now I am constantly out hunting and am busy arranging how to place our educational staff for the winter. I have been to Moscow looking for a teacher and a tutor. To-day I feel quite ill.

1878

Nor did matters improve as the months went on, for on 27th January he again writes:

Most unfortunately your suppositions, dear Afanásy Afanásyevitch, are wrong. Not only am I not at work, but the reason I failed to answer you was because I have been ill all this time. Lately I have even been in bed for some days. A chill in various forms: teeth and side, and the result is that time goes by—my best time—and I do no work.

Then follows a touch showing how, in many matters, his wife's mind was still attuned to his own, though she was not sharing his spiritual struggles, and in the matter of the education of the children there was already some disagreement between them:

On reading it I said to my wife, 'Fet's poem is charming, but there is one word that is wrong.' She was nursing and bustling about at the time; but at tea, having quieted down, she took up the poem to read, and at once pointed out the words 'as the Gods'—which I considered bad.

On 25th March 1878 he writes to Fet:

Last week, after seventeen years' absence, I went to Petersburg to purchase some land in Samára from General B....

There I met a pair of Orlóf Generals who made me shudder: it was just as though one were standing between two sets of rails with goods trains passing. To enter into the minds of these Generals, I had to recall the rare days of drunkenness I have experienced, or the days of my very earliest childhood.

After completing Anna Karénina Tolstoy again took up The Decembrists, which he had put aside in favour of War and Peace fourteen years before. As already mentioned, a second cousin of Tolstoy's mother, Prince S. G. Volkónsky, had been a prominent Decembrist; and Tolstoy had at his disposal a number of family diaries and journals throwing much light on the subject of that conspiracy. While in Petersburg he made personal acquaintance with some of the survivors of the movement, and also applied to the Commandant of the Petropávlof Fortress—who happened to be an officer under whom he had served in the Crimea—for permission to see the Alexis dungeons, in which the Decembrists had been confined. The Commandant received him very politely, allowed him to see over other parts of the fortress, but told him that, though any one could enter the dungeons, only three persons in the whole Empire—the Emperor, the Commandant, and the Chief of the Gendarmes—having once entered them, could again leave them.

Finally, after writing three fragments of it, Tolstoy abandoned this novel, to which he had devoted much time. The subject was one he could hardly have dealt with frankly without getting into trouble with the Censor; and he had been refused permission to study the State Archives; but in the following passage Behrs gives another, and a curiously characteristic, reason for Tolstoy's decision:

He affirmed that the Decembrist insurrection was a result of the influence of French nobles, a large number of whom had emigrated to Russia after the French Revolution. As tutors in aristocratic families, they educated the whole Russian nobility, which explains the fact that many of the Decembrists were Catholics. The belief that the movement was due to foreign influence, and was not a purely national one, sufficed to prevent Tolstoy from sympathising with it.

Another letter to Fet again shows the direction in which Tolstoy's mind was working:

6 April 1878.

I have received your delightful and long letter, dear Afanásy Afanásyevitch. Do not praise me. Really you see in me too much good, and in others too much bad. One thing in me is good: that I understand you and therefore love you. But though I love you as you are, I am always angry with you for this, that 'Martha is anxious about many things; but one thing is needful.' And in you that one thing is very strong, but somehow you disdain it and are more concerned about arranging a billiard room. Don't suppose that I refer to poems: though I expect them to come too! But it is not of them I speak; they will come in spite of the billiards; I am speaking of a conception of the world which would make it unnecessary to be angry at the stupidity of mortals. Were you and I to be pounded together in a mortar and moulded into two people, we should make a capital pair. But at present you are so attached to the things of this life, that should they some day fail you, it will go hard with you; while I am so indifferent to them, that life becomes uninteresting, and I depress others by an eternal pouring 'from void into vacuum'! Do not suppose that I have gone mad; I am merely out of sorts, but hope you will love me though I be black.

The prolonged mental struggle through which Tolstoy passed with great suffering during the years 1874-78, was quite evident to those about him, at least from 1876 onward. Not merely did he go regularly to church, and shut himself up in his study morning and evening to pray, but his former high spirits subsided, and his desire to become meek and humble was plainly noticeable. One result of his altered attitude was, that he felt keenly that it was wrong to have an enemy. Accordingly he wrote Tourgénef to that effect, and held out to him the right hand of friendship.

To this Tourgénef replied:

Paris, 8 May 1878.

Dear Leo Nikoláyevitch,—I only to-day received your letter, addressed poste-restante. It gladdened and touched me very much. With the greatest readiness will I renew our former friendship, and I warmly press the hand you hold out to me. You are quite right in supposing me to have no hostile feelings towards you. If ever they existed they have long since disappeared, and the recollection of you only remains as of a man to whom I am sincerely attached, and of a writer whose first steps it was my good fortune to be the first to hail, and each new work from whom has always aroused in me the liveliest interest. I am heartily glad of the cessation of the misunderstandings that arose between us.

I hope this summer to be in the Government of Orlóf, and in that case we shall of course see one another. Till then, I wish you all that is good, and once more press your hand in friendship.

On 13th June, on the point of starting for Samára with the elder children and their tutor, Tolstoy writes to Fet:

I have seldom so enjoyed a summer as this year, but a week ago I caught cold and fell ill, and only to-day have I come to life again.

Somewhat later in the summer the Countess, with the younger children, joined her husband in Samára.

Hardly were the Tolstoys back from Samára before Tourgénef wrote from Moscow that he would be in Toúla on the following Monday, 7th August. Tolstoy, accompanied by his brother-in-law, drove thither to meet him, and brought him to Yásnaya, where he passed a couple of days. Both writers were delighted to feel that their seventeen-year disagreement was ended; and the Countess, who when a girl had known Tourgénef well, was equally pleased to welcome him to the house.

A lady who was there at the time, tells us that the two writers spent much of their time in philosophic and religious conversation in Tolstoy's study, but:

When they came out into the sitting-room their conversation became general and took a different turn. Tourgénef told with pleasure of the villa Bougival which he had just bought near Paris, and of its comfort and arrangements, saying, 'We have built a charming conservatory, costing ten thousand francs,' and 'we' did so-and-so and so-and-so, meaning by 'we,' the Viardot family and himself.

'Of an evening we often play vint [a game similar to bridge]—do you?' he asked Tolstoy.

'No, we never play cards,' replied the Count, and turned the conversation to another topic.

Knowing that he was fond of chess, the Countess Tolstoy asked him to play a game with her eldest son, a lad of fifteen, saying, 'He will all his life remember having played with Tourgénef.'

Tourgénef condescendingly agreed, and began a game, while continuing to talk to us.

'In Paris I often used to play chess and was considered a good player. They called me le chevalier de pion. I am fond of pawns.... Do you know the new phrase now in fashion among the French—vieux jeu? Whatever you say, a Frenchman replies, "Vieux jeu!"'

'Eh! but one must not joke with you,' he exclaimed suddenly, turning to his youthful opponent. 'You have all but done for me.'

And he began to play carefully, and only won the game with difficulty, for young Tolstoy really played chess excellently.

At evening tea Tourgénef told how he had played the part of a satyr at M^me Viardot's private theatricals, and how some of the audience had gazed at him with amazement. We knew that he had himself written the piece (a sort of operetta) for those theatricals, and knew also that Russians, both abroad and at home, disapproved of his playing the fool for M^me Viardot's amusement; and we all felt uncomfortable. In telling it he seemed to be trying to justify himself, but he soon passed on to another theme, and we breathed more freely.

He had the gift of words and spoke readily and smoothly, but seemed to prefer narrating to conversing. He told us of his confinement in the Hauptwerk of the Spássky Police-station in Petersburg, for his article on the death of Gógol, and he described how dull it was....

Tolstoy also narrated, and I liked his stories better: they were more strongly sketched, often humorous, and always original. In them much was simple, unexpected and touching.... I. S. Aksákof used to say, with reference to Tolstoy's gigantic power, that he had 'a bear-like talent,' but I will add that his soul is as meek 'as a dove,' and as enthusiastic as a youth; and that the union of those two qualities explains the new direction he has since taken, a direction which so distressed Tourgénef.

An hour before midnight Tourgénef rose.

'It is time for me to go to the station,' said he.

We all rose. The railway station was one-and-a-half miles away, and Count Leo Nikoláyevitch drove with him, to see him off.

Behrs also writes of the same visit:

At dinner Tourgénef told many stories, and to the delight of the younger folk mimicked not only persons, but animals also. Thus, placing one hand under the other, he depicted a fowl waddling in the soup, and then imitated a hunting dog at a loss. As I listened to him and watched his tricks I couldn't help thinking that he evidently inherited something of the talent for which one of his ancestors under Peter the Great enjoyed no little fame.

This was the last summer Behrs, now a young man of twenty-three, passed with Tolstoy before taking up official work in the Caucasus. His evidence fully supports that of others who have seen Tolstoy in contact with children, peasants or native races: to all of these Tolstoy extends his charm of comprehension, consideration, and sympathy.

Whenever Tolstoy went out with his gun and his dogs, Behrs used to accompany him; and together they would ride twenty-four miles from Yásnaya to visit Count Sergius Tolstoy at Pirogóvo. Leo Tolstoy took his brother-in-law on these visits, Behrs says, 'for my sake, if not for his own, since he knew what pleasure it gave me to be with him.' The remark he made when he heard that Behrs had obtained an official appointment in the Caucasus is characteristic: 'You are too late for the Caucasus. The whole country already stinks of officials.' Characteristic too of the feeling Tolstoy inspires among those who know him most intimately, is Behrs's concluding remark: 'I at least am aware of nothing in his life that needs to be concealed.'

At the beginning of September Tourgénef, on his return from his estate, again visited Yásnaya, but he arrived at an unfortunate time, when there was illness in the house, and he paid but a short visit.

One sees by a letter to Fet on 5th September that Tolstoy still found himself unable to be quite intimate with his fellow novelist:

Tourgénef on his return journey came to see us and was glad to receive your letter. He is still the same, and we know the degree of nearness possible between us.

I have a terrible desire to write something, but feel a depressing doubt whether this is a false or a true appetite.

The last sentence must refer to the Confession, most of which was not written till the next year.

In October he again wrote to Fet:

I do not know how or in what spirit to begin to write to you, dear Afanásy Afanásyevitch; any way, there are no words for it but, 'I am to blame, I am to blame, and I am altogether to blame!' Though it is always superfluous for apologisers to explain their reasons, I will yet write mine because they are true and explain my condition. For a month past, if not more, I have been living amid the fumes not of external occurrences (on the contrary we are by ourselves, living quietly) but of what is going on inside: something I know not how to name. I go out shooting, read, reply to questions put to me, eat, and sleep, but can do nothing, not even write a letter, a score of which have collected.

Apparently while in bad spirits, he wrote to Tourgénef asking him not to refer to his (Tolstoy's) writings—for the latter replies on 15th October, saying: 'I am glad you are all physically well, and hope the "mental sickness" of which you write has now passed.' He then continues:

Although you ask me not to speak of your writings, I must still remark that it has never happened to me to laugh at you 'even a little.' Some of your things pleased me very much; others did not please me at all; while others again, such as The Cossacks for instance, afforded me great pleasure and excited my wonder. But what ground was there for laughter? I thought you had long since got rid of such 'reflexive' feelings. Why are they current only among authors, and not among musicians, painters, and other artists? Probably because in literary work more of that part of the soul is exposed, which it is not quite convenient to show. But at our (already mature) age as authors, it is time we were accustomed to it.

This displeased Tolstoy, who in his next letter to Fet expressed his vexation with Tourgénef who, I imagine, had not intended to give offence:

22 November 1878.

Dear Afanásy Afanásyevitch,—I will go to Moscow and have 'I am to blame' printed on my notepaper. But I don't think I am to blame for not replying to the letter in which you promised to come and see us. I remember my joy at that news, and that I replied immediately. If not, still please don't punish me, but come....

Yesterday I received a letter from Tourgénef; and do you know, I have decided that it will be better to 'keep further away from him and from sin' [A common Russian saying]. He is an unpleasant sort of quarrel-maker.

My congratulations to you on your birthday. I will not in future omit to congratulate you on the 23rd, and hope not to forget it for the next dozen times. That will be enough for either of us. Au revoir!

Fet was destined to live four years beyond the span Tolstoy allotted him, and Tolstoy himself is still with us, though more than thirty years have passed since that letter was written; and what strenuous years they have been! How he has wrestled with life's greatest problems one after another, and how he has flung down before the world his opinions (right, wrong, or motley) on dogmatic theology, Christ's Christianity, religion in general, economic and social problems, famine, the employment of violence, war, conscription, Government, patriotism, the sex problem, art, science, food-reform and the use of stimulants and narcotics, besides producing a series of simple stories for the people, as well as more complex ones for the rest of society, three plays, one great novel, and a stream of weighty and interesting essays and letters which have poured forth from Yásnaya in an increasing stream as the years went by; not to mention works kept back for posthumous publication, at the mention of which the literary world pricks up its ears!

On 1st October 1878 Tourgénef wrote to Fet from Bougival, again saying that he intended to translate The Cossacks into French, and adding, 'It will give me great pleasure to assist in acquainting the French public with the best story that has been written in our language.'

In another letter from Bougival in December, he remarked:

I was very glad to come together with Tolstoy, and I spent three pleasant days with him; his whole family are very sympathetic, and his wife is charming. He has grown very quiet and has matured. His name begins to gain European celebrity: we Russians have long known that he has no rivals.

The course of the story has swept me a little past Tolstoy's fiftieth birthday—the point at which I intended to close this first part of my work. Besides giving some brief survey of his writings during his first twenty-five years of authorship, all that now remains is to give a summary of that remarkable work, his Confession, which shows us vividly, though with some amount of involuntary artistic heightening, what had been going on in his mind and soul from 1874 to 1879, the year in which it was written.

By way of brief preface to his Confession, it will be in place to say a few words about two different tendencies which, each in its own way, influenced Tolstoy. On the one hand there was the religious life of the people, with all its Medieval traditions. Tolstoy had only to go a short walk from his house to reach the highroad, on which pilgrims going afoot to the shrines of the Saints could always be met; and he had many a conversation with these pilgrims at the rest-house they frequented. Among them there were many to whom the things of this world were certainly less precious than obedience to the will of God as they understood it; and Tolstoy's stories show us how closely he observed these people, and how near some of them came to his soul. On the other hand he was influenced by the quite modern and very remarkable movement that was at this time beginning to make itself felt in Russia; a movement having its roots in conditions of life which greatly disturbed Tolstoy's own mind, and which took as one of its watchwords the motto 'Towards the People'—a sentiment quite in harmony with his own attitude.

In 1875 public attention was aroused by the trial of the Dolgoúshin group of propagandists; and the trial of 'The Moscow 50,' in March 1877, revealed the fact that a number of girls of wealthy families were voluntarily leading the life of factory hands working fourteen hours a day in over-crowded factories, that they might come into touch with working people, to teach them, and to carry on a social and political propaganda among them. Then followed the historic trial of 'The 193' in 1878.

These and many other indications showed that in spite of the repressive measures of the Government, a steadily increasing number of Russians felt (what Tolstoy also felt strongly) that the existing order of society results in the mass of the people having to live in conditions of blighting ignorance and grinding poverty; while the parasitic minority who live in plenty and sometimes in extravagant superfluity, render no service at all equivalent to the cost of their maintenance. The mere statement that those who had received an education thanks to the work of the masses, owe service to the masses in return, sufficed to rouse to action some of the young men and women of that day. They left their wealthy homes, lived the simplest lives, ran fearful risks, and according to their lights—sometimes not very clear ones—devoted themselves to the service of the people.

While this was going on around him, a man with such a temperament as Tolstoy's, could not be at rest.

Already in 1875 Mihaylóvsky had published a remarkable series of articles on The Right and Left Hand of Count Tolstoy, in which he pointed out that that author's works reveal the clash of contrary ideals and tendencies in the writer's soul, and that especially his educational articles contain ideas quite in conflict with certain tendencies noticeable in War and Peace. With remarkable prevision Mihaylóvsky predicted an inevitable crisis in Tolstoy's life, and added:

One asks oneself what such a man is to do, and how he is to live?... I think an ordinary man in such a position would end by suicide or drunkenness; but a man of worth will seek for other issues—and of these there are several.

One of these he suggested would be, to write for the people (Tolstoy's Readers had already been published) or to write so as to remind 'Society' that its pleasures and amusements are not those of the mass of mankind, and thus to arouse the latent feelings of justice in some who now forget the debt they owe to their fellows.

In fact, the trial of 'The 193' or the movement from which it arose, had a vital, though indirect, influence on Tolstoy, who at this time had engaged V. I. Alexéyef, a graduate of Petersburg University, as mathematical master for his son. Alexéyef had been a member of the Tchaykóvsky group which carried on an educational propaganda in elementary Socialism in the early '70's. The activities of this group were so restricted, and they were so hampered by the police, that some of its members, feeling a need of freer activity, migrated to Kansas, where for two years they carried on an agricultural colony. Dissensions arose among them, and their experiment failed. Alexéyef returned to Russia; Tchaykóvsky settled in England, where he spent many years, and only returned to Russia after the amnesty of 1905, to be again arrested and to spend more than a year in prison awaiting a trial which ended in his acquittal. Tolstoy noticed that Alexéyef was a man who shaped his life in accord with his beliefs, and he respected him accordingly, and through him made acquaintance with some of the best representatives of the immature Socialist movement then brewing in Russia. We have here a remarkable example of the indirect way in which thoughts influence the world. Auguste Comte wrote a philosophy. Having filtered through the minds of G. H. Lewes and J. S. Mill, it reached Nicholas Tchaykóvsky when he was a schoolboy of fourteen in the Seventh Gymnasium in Petersburg. 'It fascinated me to such an extent,' says he in the reminiscences contributed to G. H. Perris's interesting book, Russia in Revolution, 'that, while sitting in school, I longed to get back to our lodgings and to my chosen reading. The more I progressed, the more I was absorbed. This study powerfully affected my mind and systematised my ideas.' A few years later Tchaykóvsky, having read much meanwhile, formed his group, which sowed the seeds of changes yet to come. Progress, however, was very slow, and he felt 'the ineffectiveness of ordinary political and socialistic propaganda among a deeply religious peasantry, still hopeful of benefits from above.' This forced him to reconsider the whole situation. 'I met,' adds he, 'some friends with whom I began to work upon the rather Utopian idea of formulating a new religion, and, for the sake of more effective experiment, we were soon compelled to transfer ourselves with this stupendous mission, to the steppes of Kansas.'

Wishing to transform society, Tchaykóvsky had seen the need of some systematic outlook on life—'a new religion,' in fact. Dissatisfied with his own outlook on life, Tolstoy was seeking a new religion, and when he found it, it led him to demand great changes in society. The mature novelist and the young propagandist, who have never met in the flesh, had therefore much in common; though Tolstoy dislikes the works of Comte and Mill, which had done so much for Tchaykóvsky, and can hardly speak of them with tolerance (except Mill's Autobiography, which interests him). Detesting the methods of violence to which those who succeeded Tchaykóvsky felt themselves driven, Tolstoy could still not doubt the sincerity of the faith that actuated most of them; for they had all to lose and nothing to gain by joining the revolutionary movement. Sophie Peróvsky, one of 'the 193' (subsequently hanged in Petersburg for taking part in the assassination of Alexander II), was the daughter of the Governor-General of that city, and was a niece of the Minister of Education. Demetrius Lisogoúb, a landowner, devoted his whole fortune of some £40,000 to the movement; and was hanged in Odessa. Prince Peter Kropótkin risked his all to give lessons to workmen; and escaped abroad, having lost position, fortune, and the right to live in his native land. Tolstoy, an older man, with a strong character and definite views of his own on many points, could not join the Socialist movement, but that he was influenced by it is beyond doubt.

The state of Russian life was indeed such that men of sensitive consciences could not be at rest (as, indeed, when and where in the wide world can they?), and the work Tolstoy had already done, marked him out as one in whose soul the struggle which was moving others, would assuredly be fought out strenuously. No one however, and certainly not he himself, as yet knew what effect that crisis would have upon him, or what his course of life would be in the years that were to come.