1 
 
 REESE LIBRARY 
 
 OF THK 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
TOLSTOY 
 
 THE MAN 
 
 BY EDWARD A. STEINER 
 
 ILLUSTRATED 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
 . 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE OUTLOOK COMPANY 
 1904 
 
PRESERVATION 
 
 COPY ADDED 
 ORIGIN ALTO BE 
 
 RETAINED 
 
 JAN 
 
 COPYRIGHT 1903 BY THE OUTLOOK COMPANY 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published March 1904 
 
P6-33S5 
 
 Mft;N 
 
 " Marriage is an elevation for such as we." Tolstoy 
 
 TO HER WHO HAS MADE THIS TRUE IN MY OWN LIFE, WHO 
 
 HAS GLORIFIED FOR ME WOMANHOOD, WIFEHOOD, AND 
 
 MOTHERHOOD, WHO HAS BEEN MY PATIENT HELP- 
 
 MEET IN ALL OF LIFE'S TASKS, THIS BOOK, 
 
 WHICH IS ONE OF THEM, IS DEDI- 
 
 CATED IN GRATEFUL 
 
 LOVE 
 

INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 THE author of "Tolstoy the Man," Dr. Edward 
 A. Steiner, who occupies the professorship of Ap- 
 plied Christianijty in Iowa College, spent several 
 months in Russia at the request of The Outlook 
 Company and under its commission for the ex- 
 press purpose of obtaining material for this book. 
 As appears in his opening chapter, he renewed at 
 Yasnaya Polyana, Tolstoy's residence, an acquaint- 
 ance begun many years ago. Dr. Steiner not 
 only had the opportunity of getting close to the 
 personal and individual side of his subject and 
 of discussing with the great Russian writer and 
 teacher his life and work, he brings also to his 
 task a study and appreciation of Tolstoy's char- 
 acter and theories extending over a long period. 
 He talked with Tolstoy's intimate friends and 
 admirers, was shown many letters throwing new 
 light on Tolstoy's doctrines and practice, gath- 
 ered from newspapers and books, accessible only 
 
 vii 
 
INTRODUCTORY NOTE 
 
 in Russia, a fund of valuable facts, visited 
 Moscow to get acquainted with the "Tolstoy cir- 
 cle" there, and in short used every effort to ob- 
 tain all available material for an authentic and 
 vivid memoir. It need hardly be pointed out that 
 the personality of Tolstoy is of intense interest 
 the world over, and this without regard to the 
 question whether readers do or do not accept in 
 full his social teachings. The many incidents and 
 anecdotes here first published cannot fail to add 
 to the world's knowledge of " Tolstoy the Man." 
 The illustrations in the book are in part the work 
 of the brilliant young Russian artist Pasternak, 
 an enthusiastic admirer of Tolstoy, who has en- 
 joyed a close intimacy with him and has painted 
 him repeatedly as he appears in the family cir- 
 cle. 
 
 THE PUBLISHERS. 
 
 viii 
 
PREFACE 
 
 THE monotonous plain through which the Dnyper 
 winds its way seaward is the cradle of the 
 Slavic race. The physical character of this vast 
 stretch, with its uninteresting moor and marsh, 
 has impressed itself upon all the members of 
 this widely scattered family ; but especially upon 
 the Russian, who is to-day its largest and most 
 important member. From the lowest mujik to 
 the highest dignitary, racial characteristics 
 remain the same ; and beneath much apparent 
 change which wealth and culture have wrought, 
 there is among all classes the unmistakable 
 Slavic element. The national temperament is 
 undisturbed by great passions, just as that 
 cradle land is free from sudden mountain 
 heights or vast depressions. Not unlike the 
 land is also its history, which records no grand 
 heroic movements in its early days. Without 
 song or story the past lies deeply buried ; and 
 
 ix 
 
PREFACE 
 
 although the present division of the Slavic peo- 
 ple was not completed earlier than the seventh 
 century, history is silent, because no doubt there 
 was nothing to tell. They were at first peaceful 
 hunters, and after exchanging the bow and 
 spear for the spade, they became warriors only 
 when pressed to the fight. The later history 
 of the Slavic tribes which were surrounded or 
 subjugated by other races is tumultuous enough ; 
 but in spite of the invasion of Mongol, of Swedes, 
 and of the French, the inner quiet of Russia 
 remained unbroken. The heart of this country 
 is like that of the ocean, unstirred by passing 
 storms, although in Russia even the surface 
 never rose above its appointed level. Renaissance 
 and Reformation alike, though they touched the 
 life of Bohemia and manifested themselves among 
 the Poles and Slovaks locked in among the cres- 
 cent-shaped Carpathians, passed unnoticed over 
 the parent nation, Russia. The Byzantine stamp 
 which was pressed upon its soul became a leaden 
 weight and the Church its prison-house, from 
 which neither life nor light emanated. The Ro- 
 
PREFACE 
 
 man Church, while professing ardently its immu- 
 tability, has given birth, though in pain, to great 
 men who ushered in new periods ; but the Greek 
 Church remained barren. The masters of the 
 Church the czars, the fathers of these Russian 
 children were themselves like spoiled children 
 to whom the people were playthings and the plow- 
 men toys, such as the giant king's daughter (of 
 whom Uhland sings) gathered in her apron and 
 carried to her f ather's castle. 
 
 To the Russian the nation is a family, over 
 which rules the God-appointed czar, whose yoke 
 is borne patiently and uncomplainingly. He alone 
 is capable of removing the people's burdens, and 
 what he can accomplish has been shown by Peter 
 the Great and Alexander II., who by a few sen- 
 tences ushered in new eras for their million- 
 headed family. 
 
 No one was born from among the people whose 
 voice or hand was strong enough to rouse the na- 
 tion from its lethargy or to make the way straight 
 for the coming of some greater one. True, Russia 
 gave birth to singers who struck many a brave 
 
 xi 
 
PREFACE 
 
 note, but were either lured, like Pushkin, into 
 some gilded cage, or died in exile, mute even in 
 their last agony ; others were stimulated and in- 
 spired by those vast movements which changed 
 the political and social life of Western Europe 
 and gave birth to a new nation across the sea ; 
 but they had no standing ground, no institu- 
 tion or band of men, nothing to strengthen 
 new-born thoughts, and their voices died 
 faintly away. It was thus with all the Western 
 culture, which, in spite of passport regulations 
 and rigid censorship, entered Russia ; for it was 
 in such great contrast to all which the State, 
 the Church, and society tolerated that it was 
 repelled everywhere, and had no brooding-place 
 except among revolutionists, where it exploded, 
 rather than grew, into maturity. 
 
 It is true that the Russian of the upper class 
 is steeped in Western culture ; but it is also true 
 that in a large measure he has been able to get 
 only its surface ; that part of it which he found 
 on the boulevards of Paris, on the pages of the 
 inoffensive ladies' journals, or in books which 
 
 xii 
 
PREFACE 
 
 escaped the censor's critical eye. Much of so- 
 called Western culture came in with morally 
 bankrupt tutors and governesses who tainted 
 the atmosphere in which the aristocratic youth 
 developed and matured. One finds everywhere 
 genuine culture, and often more radical ideas 
 than in the West of Europe ; but everything is 
 unstable and unsteady, like isolated logs floating 
 in the Volga, rather than like those which have 
 been hewn, and fastened into a building. Out 
 of this condition have grown startling contrasts 
 between thinking and acting, knowing and 
 believing, between a few who are learned and the 
 vast mass of the ignorant, between those who 
 live in excess and those who have not yet begun 
 to live. This state of things makes the Russia 
 of to-day an enigma; makes it, as Carl Emil 
 Francois says, "Half Asia," neither Europe nor 
 Asia. This makes it the land of the most revolu- 
 tionary and the most reactionary ideas, makes 
 its atmosphere stifling from suppressed silence, 
 and vibrant from new-born thought. Some day 
 there will be a page in the history of Russia on 
 
 xiii 
 
PREFACE 
 
 which will be written : " There was a man sent 
 from God whose name was" Tolstoy, a man 
 who was to break the prophetic silence of cen- 
 turies, and who by plain speech and in utter self- 
 forgetfulness was to "make straight the way of 
 the Lord." His coming and his growing into such 
 prominence were not the trick of genius, were 
 not the striking of a golden vein which brought 
 fame and wealth to the lucky finder, but were 
 as truly an historic event as they were an "his- 
 toric necessity." It is also true, as Eugen Schmidt 
 says, "that Tolstoy did not come as a preacher 
 of morals, as a proclaimer of a few ethical max- 
 ims which were to change the current of men's 
 lives, not as a man who wanted to be a good 
 example, not, certainly, as a philanthropist 
 who gave to every man who asked of him, not 
 as a writer of realistic novels which were to 
 curdle men's blood into coldness and decency; 
 but he came as the proclaimer of a new philo- 
 sophy of life ; a philosophy diametrically opposed 
 to both the philosophy of the Church and of 
 modern science, and 'in perfect harmony with 
 
 xiv 
 
PREFACE 
 
 the philosophy of Jesus/ according to his own 
 words." 
 
 Tolstoy's philosophy is not clear to others, 
 although many say that it is a great light; .it 
 is by nature both mystical and rationalistic, both 
 conservative and radical ; it is both old and very 
 new. While Tolstoy has grown out of conditions 
 which exist in his native country, while in the 
 largest measure he typifies the Russia of to-day 
 in its growing contrasts, in its dissatisfaction with 
 itself, in its spirit of cruel self-examination, and 
 its religious nature and tendency, he has a 
 message for the world which he intends shall 
 drive out a civilization based upon barbarism and 
 cruelty; a philosophy of life which, as he sees it, 
 is fundamentally opposed to the laws of nature, 
 and a religion which has reduced God to the level 
 of a Russian monarch, degraded the Saviour into 
 a magician and the Bible into a fetish. He means 
 to bring in a culture which shall be free from 
 barbarism, a philosophy of life which shall be in 
 harmony with the teachings of Jesus, and a reli- 
 gion which shall answer the highest promptings 
 
 XV 
 
PREFACE 
 
 of the soul. He came providentially into Russia, 
 to the Slavs, the least advanced of the civilized 
 races, the least spoiled by modern culture ; he 
 came without sword or staff, purse or scrip, the 
 weakest among the czar's subjects, yet stronger 
 than the czar ; and because he fights not with 
 carnal weapons he is gaining victories for which 
 generations might have bled in vain. 
 
 Some people may read this book because they 
 wish to see the man Tolstoy, colossal giant that 
 he is ; and I shall try to draw him as I have seen 
 him, and as he has impressed others who came 
 to him in different moods and for other purposes. 
 A smaller number will wish to find some key to 
 his many writings, some brief account of their 
 form, contents, and spirit, and I shall try to sat- 
 isfy this demand ; the smallest number will come 
 here to read about his philosophy and his mes- 
 sage. This last desire, too, I shall try to fulfill, 
 although it is the hardest of my tasks. The truth 
 is, that to do justice to the life of this man, one 
 must touch upon all these phases ; for they are 
 part of his life. The man is in his books, and in 
 
 xvi 
 
PREFACE 
 
 every line of them is his philosophy ; one cannot 
 separate them, and yet to present them together 
 is a task before which a stronger one than my- 
 self might tremble. But hard though the work 
 may be, it is entered into with joy, because it 
 brings the writer again in touch with one who is 
 too great to be called friend, yet who is lowly 
 enough to call himself brother. 
 
 That I may not dim his glory, and yet not 
 unduly exalt him, that I may not misrepresent 
 him and yet truthfully present him to view, that 
 I may satisfy the curious and yet bring them 
 nearer to the source of the teachings of Tolstoy, 
 which is the Gospel of Jesus, is my only desire. 
 
 My acknowledgments are due to Director 
 Raphael Loewenf eld, of Berlin, who placed at my 
 disposal his unsurpassed collection of Tolstoyana 
 and who marked out the channels for obtaining 
 new and valuable material both in St. Peters- 
 burg and in Moscow; to Eugen Schmidt, of 
 Buda-Pesth, who has systematized the teachings 
 of Tolstoy in his remarkable book "The Cultural 
 Mission of Tolstoy ; " to Mr. Pavel Ettinger and 
 
 xvii 
 
PREFACE 
 
 to various members of the editorial staff of the 
 " Rusky Wyedomosty," of Moscow, and to many 
 friends in various parts of Russia who have given 
 me valuable advice and encouragement when both 
 were needed ; above all, to Mr. George Kennan, 
 who is gratefully remembered by all thoughtful 
 Russians, regardless of their political creed, as 
 "The Apostle of Russia's prison reform" and by 
 whose thorough knowledge of Russia and Russian 
 affairs this book has profited as well as by his 
 generous and always correct criticism. 
 
 E. A. S. 
 
 Moscow, March 1, 1903. 
 
 xvni 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. TOLSTOY TO-DAY ........ I 
 
 II. CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL LIFE ... 21 
 
 III. THE LANDED PROPRIETOR 45 
 
 IV. THE CAUCASUS 56 
 
 V. SEBASTOPOL 7 2 
 
 VI. IN ST. PETERSBURG . ! 88 
 
 vn. TOLSTOY'S FIRST VISIT ABROAD . . . 101 
 VIIL TOLSTOY'S SECOND AND THIRD JOURNEYS 
 
 ABROAD 114 
 
 ix. TOLSTOY'S MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 135 
 
 X. TOLSTOY AS PEDAGOGUE 154 
 
 xi. "WAR AND PEACE" . . . . . .172 
 
 xii. "ANNA KARENINA" 187 
 
 xiii. TOLSTOY'S CONFESSION AND CONVER- 
 SION 198 
 
 XIV. THE LIFE AS AN INFLUENCE. . . .213 
 
 XV. THE TEACHINGS OF TOLSTOY . . . .229 
 XVI. THE MISUNDERSTOOD TOLSTOY . . .253 
 
 xix 
 
CONTENTS 
 xvii. TOLSTOY'S LITERARY ACTIVITIES AT 
 
 THE CLOSE OF THE NINETEENTH 
 
 CENTURY 274 
 
 XVIH. TOLSTOY THE MAN 290 
 
 xx 
 
TOLSTOY THE 
 
 CHAPTER t UNIVERSITY 
 
 TOLSTOY TO-DAY 
 
 TWENTY years ago there came into the rational- 
 istic atmosphere of a German college the influ- 
 ence of a Russian novel which meant much to 
 a group of young men who had thought God out 
 of existence and had buried Christianity with 
 all other religious superstitions. While religion 
 seemed dead around them, it still was living 
 within them, and the call to an heroic expression 
 of it in Tolstoy's " War and Peace " awakened 
 long slumbering thoughts and new and vital 
 desires. 
 
 There must be something innate in human 
 nature which sends men upon pilgrimages, for 
 the first wish which the students expressed while 
 the joy of the new-found truth had not yet spent 
 itself, was to go to Moscow and see and hear 
 the man who had saved them from losing a pre- 
 cious possession, and who had given to them a 
 new interpretation of life and of the Lifegiver. 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 The young men had time, but little money, so 
 the journey had to be made on foot, the long, 
 most interesting trip taking them through the 
 heart of the Slavic world. When they knocked 
 at the hospitable door of Count Tolstoy's house in 
 Moscow they looked more like tramps than stu- 
 dents, and the welcome from the servants and 
 from some members of his family was such as 
 to send the autumn chill of the unpicturesque 
 entrance hall into their exalted feeling. When 
 the Count himself opened the door of the living- 
 room, where the samovar sang and the fire 
 crackled while the smoke of cigarettes was thick 
 and seductive, there came with him a warm air 
 and a warmer welcome. He was in the prime of 
 life, at the height of his literary fame in Russia, 
 and the larger world was beginning to grow 
 conscious of him. 
 
 Our admiration of Tolstoy grew no less be- 
 cause of our close contact with him, and the 
 spell by which he enthralled us has remained 
 a valued and abiding possession to some of us. 
 Neither life nor death seemed the same thing 
 afterwards, although our minds were too imma- 
 ture fully to grasp his teaching and the life of 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 pleasure was too alluring to put it off for the 
 life of labor. 
 
 Three times this pilgrimage was made by me 
 in maturer years, and each time the welcome 
 was more cordial and the admission into Tolstoy's 
 inner life more generous. These visits brought 
 with them the privilege of meeting the men and 
 women who see in Tolstoy not only an author 
 and a famous man but their great teacher and 
 the revealer of a new philosophy of life. 
 
 The winter of 1903 was spent in close rela- 
 tion with this circle, and while the bond with 
 Tolstoy himself was less intimate, this was due 
 to the fact that the news of his serious illness 
 checked the desire of the artist and biographer 
 to urge their presence upon him, and only after 
 we heard that his condition had improved did 
 we venture our request. " Come and bring N. 
 with you," read the telegram which we received 
 in answer to our letter. N. is a musician of note, 
 and the feeling that through his playing Tolstoy 
 would receive much pleasure made our going 
 easier, for usually we felt that we gave nothing 
 in return for the inspiration received. 
 
 To start from Moscow at midnight, to be locked 
 3 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 in a train whose compartments are so hot that 
 they can well serve the purpose of a Russian 
 bath, to inhale cigarette smoke which every- 
 where makes the atmosphere stale and thick, is 
 no great pleasure, especially as the train stops 
 longer at the stations than it travels between 
 
 them, and, being the only so-called fast train, is 
 
 
 
 uncomfortably crowded. No air either enters or 
 leaves the compartment, and when we reach 
 our destination, and can really breathe the fresh, 
 ozone-laden air, it is as exhilarating a moment 
 as if we had stepped from a prison cell into 
 freedom. The little depot is almost covered by 
 snow, and after being wakened for a moment 
 by the stopping of the train it sinks again into 
 the deepest quiet. Here and there from among 
 the white birches the rising smoke tells of some 
 mujik's cabin in which the housewife has be- 
 stirred herself and has kindled the fire. The 
 horse and sleigh of Countess Tolstoy are await- 
 ing us in the station yard, and almost simul- 
 taneously we ask the coachman, " How is the 
 Count ? " " Slava Bogu [Praise God], he is much 
 better," answers the faithful servant, whose 
 broad, good-natured face smiles at us from his 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 wrappings of fur, which make him look like an 
 overgrown infant ready to be carried away by 
 its nurse. He remembers the Count's guests, and 
 has a particular smile for those who know that 
 Tolstoy's philosophy about money has not at all 
 influenced his servants, who are just as eager 
 for their tips (na tschay) as if they were living 
 in the most materialistic atmosphere. Swiftly 
 we glided along through the increasing quiet ; 
 the noise of the passing train had almost ceased, 
 and its deep breathing grew fainter and fainter. 
 From the east a tinge of golden red poured over 
 the silvery landscape ; for a moment there was 
 a hovering between twilight and morning, then 
 the sun rose, bringing light but no warmth, and 
 the great conqueror who in the summer colors 
 earth and skies in varied hue seemed unable to 
 affect the mass of white or to change the great 
 shroud into a wedding-garment. The noisy crows 
 alone made dark spots upon the landscape and 
 brought discord and disturbance into silence and 
 harmony. No one in the village had yet stirred 
 out of doors ; the peasants were still lying upon 
 their warm bake-ovens hibernating until the 
 spring-time, when the increasing hunger would 
 
 5 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 drive them out of doors and press the plow into 
 their hands. The snow lay up to the windows 
 of the low cabins, which were kept from being 
 lost in the colorless landscape by the dirt of 
 doors and outer walls. Horses, cattle, and fowl 
 were indoors with the peasants, and within many 
 a hut was heard the faint cock-crow, followed 
 by the grunting of an unfed pig or the hoof- 
 beat of a restless horse. From above the snow, 
 like strange -shaped mushrooms, peeped with 
 their Chinese roofs the white towers flanking 
 the gateway to the Tolstoy estate, and the trunks 
 of the trees within made dark lines upon the 
 whiteness, showing the well-worn road between 
 them. At the door we were met by Maria Le- 
 vovna, the Count's favorite daughter, who has 
 been constantly at his bedside, and who at this 
 time was acting as his private secretary and is 
 his confidential friend. Among the Count's chil- 
 dren the daughters had the greatest sympathy 
 with his teachings, although since they have 
 married they have gone the way of the world, 
 much to his regret. 
 
 When we arrived, Countess Tolstoy was still 
 in her room ; she rises very late, her work keep- 
 
 6 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 ing her up until past midnight. She is now 
 correcting a new edition of her husband's works, 
 and between the struggle with publishers and 
 proof-readers she is taxed to the utmost, al- 
 though she preserves both her youth and strength 
 to a remarkable degree. Any one who saw her 
 a few evenings before at the symphony concert 
 in Moscow, radiant in a light gray silk costume, 
 her bright eyes shining from pleasure, would 
 not have realized how much work and how many 
 years are burdening her. 
 
 We were immediately shown to our rooms, 
 but great was our astonishment when we found 
 one of them to be the Count's former study, 
 which had been converted into a guest-room 
 after his removal upstairs was necessitated by 
 his severe illness. Mr. P. immediately called an 
 indignation meeting to protest against such sac- 
 rilege, and we unanimously declared our disap- 
 proval of the change. The room should have 
 been kept as it was. Those scattered books, that 
 table full of loose pages of manuscript, the 
 large ink-pot, the Count's picturesque but crude 
 scythe, and his working garments all are gone ; 
 the books are transferred to book-cases, where 
 
 7 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 they stand like soldiers in perfect order, and our 
 unpoetic satchels lie upon the table where he 
 wrote all the books which made him famous. 
 Surely there will be no holy shrine to which en- 
 thusiastic Tolstoyans may make a pilgrimage in 
 after years, for the devastation seems complete. 
 A physician who now is a member of the house- 
 hold lives in the Count's former bedroom, but 
 the simple furniture has been left just as it was. 
 At the breakfast-table we find the usual con- 
 tingent of strangers, and we look at one another 
 in rather an unfriendly way, as much as to say, 
 " What in the world brought you here to trouble 
 a poor old sick man can't you leave him alone?" 
 We are good mind-readers, all of us, and we 
 stare at each other during the informal meal, 
 drinking our hot tea in silence ; and no friend- 
 lier look comes over the faces of these some- 
 bodies and nobodies when our party is asked to 
 go upstairs to see the Count. The room which 
 we enter is spacious and comfortable ; two large 
 windows look out over the tree-tops and upon 
 the silent fields of Yasnaya. The eye instinct- 
 ively seeks the Count, and we are much star- 
 tled as we see him. He is so thin that his features 
 
 8 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 stand out with unusual sharpness. The eyes are 
 still searching, but show the effect of much suf- 
 fering, and a veil like the shadow of a passing 
 cloud hangs over them. His voice, too, has grown 
 weak, and his hand-clasp is like the touch of 
 gloved fingers, without warmth or strength ; but 
 the greeting is not less cordial than ever. Now, 
 struggling with approaching death, he is fasten- 
 ing upon paper memories and impressions of by- 
 gone years, and when every moment is precious 
 he yet denies himself to no one, and does not 
 stint the time which he gives to his friends. It is 
 such a large welcome as only a large soul can 
 give one. It is in striking contrast to the wel- 
 come which one receives from every other mem- 
 ber of his household. Every one, from the Count- 
 ess down to the guests of yesterday, makes you 
 feel that you are here by grace alone, but he 
 makes you feel immediately that you have done 
 him a favor by coming. It is this natural and 
 grateful outflow of his noble soul toward another 
 that charms every one who comes in touch with 
 him. Yet I cannot say that one feels comfort- 
 able so close to him. He searches too deeply, 
 penetrates down to the impurest motive 
 9 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 which brought you here, and you feel as if you 
 were a thief caught in the act of breaking one 
 of the commandments. I find that all those who 
 come " in spirit and in truth " share this feeling 
 with me, and I should not wonder if in the 
 other world I see him sitting on one of those 
 twelve thrones " judging the tribes of Israel." 
 
 The conversation first turned upon his own 
 health. He has been near death's door ; the 
 heart almost ceased its task of sending blood 
 through his body, the limbs were cold and mo- 
 tionless, and around his bedside through many 
 an anxious night stood loving watchers who 
 feared the coming of a lightless morning. But 
 no fear was his ; he was not being dragged to 
 his grave. Calmly he awaited the moment of 
 y his departure, and he struggled neither for life 
 nor with death. He dropped no pious phrases 
 as he told us of his nearness to the other world ; 
 it was the story of a traveler who came near 
 to the gate of a city whose name and loca- 
 tion he knew not, but of the existence of which 
 he was quite sure. He did not tell as much 
 of himself as we should have liked to hear; 
 he quickly turned the conversation to the art- 
 
 10 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 ist's and writer's work and plans, to N.'s chil- 
 dren, whom he loves, and to all the living things 
 which interest him so much. The praise of Yas- 
 naya's quiet he turned into a sarcastic denuncia- 
 tion of the effort in the cities to build houses of 
 entertainment for the laborers. " You take them 
 out of the pure air into a place crowded by peo- 
 ple, you compel them to breathe dust, dirt, and 
 disease, and you call that helping the poor to 
 enjoy themselves." My praise of the People's 
 Palace in St. Petersburg, built by the present 
 czar, found no echo in his heart. He does not 
 believe in "throwing sweet morsels to a starv- 
 ing peasantry," although he was glad to hear of 
 my observation of increasing temperance, or at 
 least of a decrease of drunkenness, in the Rus- 
 sian cities where the dives have been entirely 
 closed and people's theaters and tea-houses have 
 taken their places. 
 
 Upon our inquisitive looks at his writing-desk, 
 he told us that he was then hard at work writ- 
 ing his reminiscences, and that he had finished 
 a new story based upon his experiences in the 
 Caucasus, and he read us page after page of the 
 simple but beautiful narrative from his life in 
 
 ii 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 those wild mountain regions. His style seems 
 simpler than ever ; clear and sharp stand out 
 his characters. The background is faint, scarcely 
 touched, but the men and women whom he por- 
 trays are alive, and the truth they speak is clear 
 and their words are pure. They are created by 
 his love for all the men he met and knew in 
 those young years of his eventful life. 
 
 The manuscript is as unreadable as ever, and 
 Maria Levovna had to be called upon to decipher 
 those passages in which her father's pen had 
 tangled the thought of the story by successive 
 corrections. He was greatest and most precious 
 when he laid down the manuscript and began to 
 tell of his own feelings and emotions in those 
 days. How little he spares himself ! he gathers 
 up every scrap of the past, even if by so doing 
 he tarnishes his halo ; but he tells truth and 
 loves truth, even if truth makes him unlovely. 
 
 We know now that the stories of his child- 
 hood and youth which were the first products of 
 his pen were not entirely autobiographical ; that, 
 in fact, they contained much which, while it 
 grew in him, he did not experience in actual 
 life. He made us all laugh by telling the story 
 
 12 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 of his first dancing-lesson. He was so ungrace- 
 ful that the dancing-master tied a stick of wood 
 to his legs to make them stand out straight. 
 "I could make better use of that stick of wood 
 now," he said, pointing to his limbs, which were 
 wrapped in a blanket. " But I shall surprise 
 you to-morrow. I shall go for a walk." 
 
 After dinner, N. was asked to play. The poor 
 musician was so nervous that he had scarcely 
 eaten anything, and when he sat down to the 
 piano he fairly trembled from stage fright. 
 First on the programme were Tolstoy's old fa- 
 vorites, Gliick, Brahms, and Handel. " They are 
 so quiet," he says ; " their passion was lofty and 
 never base." Mozart came next, and charmed 
 him most, for he loves him above all the com- 
 posers. He never stirs the evil and the low 
 within us," he says of him ; " and when he 
 touches the emotions, he does it with delicacy 
 and purity." Chopin Tolstoy enjoys very much, 
 and among Slavic composers he finds him the 
 most sympathetic. During the playing of one of 
 Beethoven's sonatas he grew visibly agitated ; 
 and that much-condemned " Kreutzer Sonata " he 
 heard with pleasure. Schumann's songs brought 
 
 13 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 tears to his eyes. " It touched my heart so/' he 
 said, in excuse for his seeming weakness. 
 
 What a rapt listener he is, this iconoclast of 
 art ! how every fiber of his being responds to it, 
 how he draws it in and how it intoxicates him ! 
 He knows, as did the Hebrew prophets, how art 
 itself may become man's temple and his God, 
 and he fights against his natural devotion to it, 
 fearing that it might lure him from the narrow 
 path which he has marked out for himself. 
 
 Long after the piano has echoed its last vibrant 
 note we sit in silence and muse. The snowflakes 
 fall thick and fast upon the already heavy-laden 
 tree-tops, and it is winter without and within. 
 The Count sits with his head sunk over his breast, 
 the fingers of both hands pressed against each 
 other, and tears in his eyes. Schumann's "Du 
 bist die Ruh " has brought them out of his heart. 
 Quiet, quiet everywhere but in our hearts ; and 
 is there quiet in his now that he is snowed in by 
 old age and feels the approach of death ? With 
 peace upon his brow, there is also much pain, 
 and such furrows seam his face as no other plow- 
 man draws but he who comes with labor and 
 with tears. The glow of artistic success, the 
 
 14 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 gratitude of those whom he has helped into the 
 light, these ought to make the evening of his 
 pilgrimage glorious. Yet each life has its trage- 
 dies, and those of us who know realize that he 
 will carry to the yonder side some great sorrows. 
 His tears are for a little boy, " Vantshek," as 
 they called him, the only one of his thirteen chil- 
 dren into whom seemed to have been breathed 
 the same spirit by which he was filled by the 
 Creator. The little one looked into the world 
 with the same clear eyes as did his father, and 
 clung to him conscious of that inner relation 
 ship, the kinship of the soul. He died. The hurt 
 in the father's heart seemed healed ; but out of 
 the treasure of song which Schumann gave to the 
 world, and to which he listened that afternoon, 
 there came one tenderest note and tore open the 
 old bleeding wound. Strangers crowd his door- 
 way asking his blessing, and go out into the world 
 to live as he has taught them ; strangers listen 
 with reverence to each one of his words and be- 
 come his disciples ; but among his own there is 
 none to preach his message or to live it. No com- 
 plaint has ever passed his lips, and the tragedy 
 of his heart has no witness except his own great 
 
 15 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 soul, which has taught itself to love, and in love 
 to suffer. 
 
 His philosophy of life has not changed, his be- 
 lief in the efficacy of Christ's law for the salva- 
 tion of man and of society is as firm as ever, and 
 his theological views have still the same agnostic 
 ring ; but he knows God, prays to God, loves God, 
 and truly "loves his neighbor as himself," and 
 does not ask, " Who is my neighbor ? " It would 
 belittle those great hours to tell all that he said 
 and how he said it, to narrate his condemnations 
 or write down what he approved. This was no 
 day for a biographer to make notes or an artist 
 to make sketches, but it was a day for men to 
 look into the great heart of one of God's great 
 men. 
 
 Russia knows no spring. April is still only win- 
 ter painted green, and then all at once it is sum- 
 mer. Long, not over-straight furrows are being 
 drawn upon the great fields which surround Yas- 
 naya Polyana. Patient mujiks are led across the 
 fertile acres by the more patient if not more in- 
 telligent horses ; and where the wooden harrow 
 has glided over the clods, women beat them into 
 
 16 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 dust. A horseman comes from between the white- 
 washed towers, and the peasants say one to 
 another, "Praise God, it is our master." It is a 
 long time since they have seen him, and a longer 
 time since they have seen him on horseback. The 
 rider of fast horses who renounced that luxury 
 years ago, and walked many a hundred miles, 
 had been lifted by servants into the saddle, as 
 he had been lifted a few months ago from volun- 
 tary hardship into involuntary ease. 
 
 The aristocratic peasant has become an aristo- 
 cratic invalid, and the man who struggled for 
 years against the conditions in which he was born 
 will die in the same conditions, a prisoner to en- 
 vironment. He deplores it, mourns over it, and 
 laments over an unreached ideal. He still envies 
 the peasant, who, after a hard life, will lie down 
 upon his bake-oven and die a happy death ; but 
 as little as Tolstoy could live just like a peasant, 
 so little can he die like one. If he had the strength, 
 he would now, in spite of the commands and the 
 entreaties of his physician and his wife, take the 
 handle of the wooden plow and follow it across 
 the fragrant upturned sod. I venture to say: 
 " Count, you have done your plowing ; you have 
 
 17 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 drawn a straighter furrow and a longer one right 
 across Russia and into the heart of Europe and 
 the New World ; " but the man who all his life 
 has believed in his power of achievement shakes 
 his head doubtfully as he views the work he has 
 done. 
 
 The sower follows the plowman and the women 
 who beat the clods into dust. Majestically, rhyth- 
 mically, and slowly he walks across the black, 
 rich earth, casting his seed, more worshipful than 
 the village priest who scatters incense for more 
 or less holy purposes. The sower carries his seed 
 in a white linen sheet which hangs from his shoul- 
 der, and he thrusts his hand into it as does an 
 artist his brush into his colors, or a generous man 
 his fingers into his treasury. With wistful eyes 
 Tolstoy follows his movements, quite unconscious 
 of the fact that he has been sowing more precious 
 seed upon larger fields ; but if you call his atten- 
 tion to this, he will say, "The best of it was only 
 chaff." Yet undisguised pleasure shows itself in 
 his face when one speaks of his influence which 
 has gone over the whole world. This very spring 
 two American millionaires came, repeating the 
 words of the rich young ruler and receiving the 
 
 18 
 
Drawn by L,. Pasternak 
 
 TOLSTOY TO-DAY 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 same answer, but not going " away sorrowful." 
 Each day brings tidings of new fields upon which 
 the seed has fallen, each day brings some ripened 
 fruit, some apostles, more disciples, admirers 
 most of all. If you speak to him of this, he will 
 answer, " Thus I know that His word is truth." 
 Yet he envies the sower with his white sheet 
 and his golden seed. " That man will die with 
 nothing to regret and everything to expect," he 
 says, and he would willingly change places with 
 him immediately. "Why not?" he says to the 
 astonished listener. " Is he not happier than the 
 czar, or the emperor of Austria, or the kings of 
 Saxony or Servia? Has he not a more guiltless 
 conscience? Who in this world is to be envied 
 if not he? Has he not a saner philosophy than 
 Nietzsche, has he not a loftier theology than the 
 Metropolitan of Moscow, has he not a healthier 
 enjoyment of art than Wagner, is he not in closer 
 touch with nature than millions of the wealthy 
 who lock themselves into fireproof cages and 
 know nature only from the railroad cars and 
 affection only from sentimental novels?" Such 
 is the flow of his thought each day ; not so pessi- 
 mistic as it sounds when coined into words, for 
 
 19 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 hopefully and joyfully he is waiting for the har- 
 vest, and although he will not again be able to 
 thrust his sickle into the ripened grain, he be- 
 lieves that " God 's in his heaven all 's right with 
 the world!" 
 
 He is really aged ; his form is bent, his step is 
 slow, but his vision is not dimmed. He is young 
 and vigorous in his condemnations, and younger 
 still in those things which rejuvenate themselves 
 each day, and which never fail Faith, Hope, and 
 Love. He is still Russia's greatest living writer, 
 in spite of the new stars which have arisen 
 Gorky, Tschechoff, Andrejeff. He is still the one 
 bold, unmuffled voice which protests against the 
 wrongs perpetrated by state and church, by czar, 
 priest, and populace. His name is still the pass- 
 word which leads into the homes and hearts of 
 all the lovers of freedom and believers in the law 
 of Christ, but all he desires is to remain one of 
 the Master's humblest disciples "even unto the 
 end." 
 
 20 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 CHILDHOOD AND SCHOOL LIFE 
 
 ALL Slavic villages are alike in their unpictur- 
 esqueness. Draw one broad street flanked by 
 straw-thatched mud huts, with half-naked chil- 
 dren in front of them, add a village pump, a 
 church steeple, and as fore or background a sea 
 of mud or a cloud of dust, and you have a 
 village which might stand in the Hungarian Car- 
 pathians, in Poland, or in the heart of Russia. 
 Such a one is Yasnaya Polyana in the district 
 of Krapivka, near the city of Tula. It lies not 
 far from the main road leading from Moscow 
 to Kiev, which is the Jerusalem of Russia, the 
 Mecca of every orthodox believer. The air of neg- 
 lect which characterizes it extends to Count Tol- 
 stoy's estate, the entrance to which is marked 
 by two whitewashed, half -ruined towers. At the 
 left is an artificial pond now used by the village 
 women, who wash their clothes so audibly that 
 the woods echo from the monotonous beat of the 
 
 21 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 paddles with which they belabor the wet gar- 
 ments. The driveway leads through a park 
 which has grown into a forest ; leaving it, one 
 faces a modest two-story building whose one 
 wing is occupied by the Count and his family, 
 while the other is a sort of city of refuge for the 
 many named and nameless ones who seek this 
 hospitable home. Three times in the last forty 
 years it has received additions to suit the grow- 
 ing needs of the Tolstoy household, but useful- 
 ness, not beauty, was sought after and achieved, 
 for nothing which man has done here shows the 
 least sign of good taste, and only the shining 
 birch and beech trees save the place from being 
 hopelessly ugly and monotonous. 
 
 The orchard in the rear of the house has relapsed 
 into wildness, and is almost lost in the encroaching 
 forest. In front is a well-worn tennis-court which 
 is of recent origin, and changes its use with the 
 varying fashions of modern sports. On the left 
 side of the house is a porch, large enough to be 
 the main gathering-place of the Count's family 
 and of his guests. One need not have a very 
 vivid imagination to find the place melancholy ; 
 silent and secluded it certainly is, and in the 
 
 22 
 
I u 
 V 
 
 TOLSTOY THE- MAN 
 
 winter not far from gruesome. The estate be- 
 longed originally to the Princes of Volkonsky, 
 an old Russian family which traces its lineage 
 as far back as 1246, where it claims St. Michael, 
 the Prince of Cernago, as the founder of this 
 noble house. Maria, the only daughter of Prince 
 Nikolai Sergejevitch Volkonsky, brought this 
 then prosperous estate as a marriage dowry into 
 the Tolstoy family, whose depleted fortunes re- 
 ceived through it a welcome addition, and whose 
 name, while much less ancient, was not less hon- 
 ored than that of the wealthy owners of Yasnaya 
 Polyana. Like many of the most virile blood of 
 Russia, the Tolstoys came originally from Ger- 
 many, where they bore the prosaic name of Dick 
 or Dickman, Tolstoy being its Russian translation. 
 One cannot get much light upon the early family 
 annals, some of which, however, were dark enough 
 not to be boasted of by the Tolstoys of to-day. 
 Courtiers and politicians there were, men with 
 strong passions who did not shrink from dark 
 deeds which brought them a titled name and for- 
 tune. Of two of the Tolstoys, Ivan and Peter 
 Andrejevitch, we know that they held high places 
 under Peter the Great, although they had espoused 
 
 23 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 the cause of Sofia, and were involved in a political 
 plot. They gained their positions by their useful- 
 ness to the monarch, who finally appointed Peter 
 Andrejevitch Tolstoy ambassador to Turkey, 
 where because of changing political currents he 
 was cast into prison, and only after four years 
 of severe suffering returned to Russia a poor 
 man ; later, the magnanimous czar recompensed 
 him for his hardships by new offices and grants 
 of money. In the adventurous journey of the 
 czar through Holland and France, Peter Andre- 
 jevitch accompanied him, rising steadily in his 
 favor, and was finally given the delicate mis- 
 sion of searching for Czarevitch Alexej, who had 
 fled from the court, and was found by Tolstoy 
 at St. Elmo, near Naples. The czarevitch was 
 condemned to death, and although no public 
 execution took place, he suffered that sever- 
 est penalty, presumably at the hands of this 
 Tolstoy, who rose so high as to fall suddenly, 
 Peter II. banishing him to a cloister near Arch- 
 angel, where he died on the 17th of February, 
 1729. While Peter Andrejevitch left upon his 
 family a shadow, which in the social life of the 
 court might even be considered a halo, he also 
 
 24 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 left some literary productions which show him 
 to have had no mean talent as an author and 
 a translator, the books he gathered in his exile 
 vouching for his taste in that direction. This 
 ancestor left to the present heir of his name and 
 title the literary tendency, and no doubt Tolstoy's 
 democratic spirit was furthered in its develop- 
 ment by the consciousness that a great and lofty 
 name and fame may come from very low sources. 
 The son of this first Count Tolstoy also died in 
 exile ; of the son whom he left, nothing is known 
 except the fact that he was the father of one 
 Andrej Ivanovitch, whose son began to make the 
 name of Tolstoy renowned by great heroism in 
 battle, and by being the grandfather of the pre- 
 sent Tolstoy, whose fame is destined to be more 
 lasting than his, although not won at court or on 
 battlefield. 
 
 Tolstoy's father was what presumably all the 
 Tolstoys were : a child of fortune, a somewhat 
 superficial student, a fighter, gambler, drinker 
 of fiery wine, and breaker of women's hearts. 
 He lived up to the reputation of his class and 
 much beyond his means, doing what many men 
 have done before and after him, marrying a 
 
 25 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 woman who had neither youth nor beauty, but a 
 large estate and many serfs. She helped him pay 
 his debts, and settle down in life, so that finally 
 he grew into as good and pious a man as she was 
 a woman. Of her still less is known than of the 
 father, except that she was a faithful wife, a 
 good mother, and an earnest Christian, worthy 
 of her illustrious son, Leo Nikolajevitch Tolstoy, 
 who was born on the 9th of September, 1828. 
 He was the fourth son, and was one year and 
 a half old when his mother died. Although he 
 never knew her, he has felt her influence all his 
 life, and in his story, " My Childhood," mother 
 love, that passion to him unknown, is recorded 
 in some of the most beautiful and touching sen- 
 tences which he has ever written. The mother 
 left a new-born babe, a little girl, Maria, and only 
 seven years later, the five children were com- 
 pletely orphaned by the death of their father. 
 When this catastrophe came upon them the family 
 had just moved to Moscow to prepare the older 
 boys for the university. The three younger chil- 
 dren had to return to the country home, where 
 they were taken in charge by a distant relative, 
 Tatyana Alexandrovna Yorgalskaya, with their 
 
 26 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 aunt, the Countess V. Osten Sacken, as guardian. 
 After her death, which occurred within four 
 years, this duty fell upon a second aunt, Pelageya 
 Ilinishna Yushkova, whose husband owned an es- 
 tate near Kazan, where the children were brought 
 in 1840. The change from Yasnaya Polyana to 
 Kazan seemed advantageous to the relatives, 
 because the latter place was the seat of a univer- 
 sity, and again because the home of the aunt 
 was a fashionable one, and these country-bred 
 children might learn there the manners and ways 
 of Russian aristocratic society. Tolstoy charac- 
 terizes this relative as " a very kind and pious 
 person, pious after the fashion of her time, per- 
 forming assiduously all the rites of the Church, 
 without being conscious of any especial duty to- 
 ward her fellow men, or any necessity of a change 
 of character on her part." She was superficial, 
 fond of pomp and glitter, and desired for her 
 foster children nothing beyond success at court 
 and in fashionable society. Characteristic of her 
 and her social circle is the wish which she ex- 
 pressed for her foster son, " that he might have 
 a ' liaison ' with a woman, as that gave a man 
 a necessary experience." She also wished him 
 
 27 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 to be an adjutant, preferably to the czar, and 
 the possessor of a great number of serfs. Nev- 
 ertheless, Tolstoy speaks of her to-day with filial 
 reverence and gratitude, for she was very kind 
 to him when at the age of about eleven years 
 he came to her, a boy who never had a childhood, 
 and over whose cradle hung the shadow of a 
 sorrow which was never quite lifted. This aunt 
 says that "he gave promise of being a very 
 homely boy, and kept his promise so well that 
 his looks separated him from other children, 
 creating in him a sensitiveness which both 
 refined and embittered his life." Everything 
 which happened made an impression upon him 
 and drew forth his question or comment. If 
 his mother had lived she would have treasured 
 that which was completely lost upon his aunts. 
 He remembers, although dimly, far back into 
 his child-life, and the struggles and cries of 
 his infant years are still in his memory. He 
 often recalls his pleasure at being bathed, and 
 can yet feel the sensation of the smooth, warm 
 bath-tub over which his tiny fingers moved 
 playfully. He also recollects the first fears, the 
 being frightened by his nurse, who, wrapped in 
 
 28 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 an old shawl, came as the Russian bugaboo to 
 frighten him and his little sister into being good 
 children. He has a vague picture of the German 
 tutor who was busy teaching his older brothers ; 
 but clearest of all to him is the time when he 
 had to leave the upper rooms where he lived with 
 his nurse and little sister Masha, and had to 
 move downstairs where his three brothers lived. 
 It was the step from childhood into boyhood, and 
 when his black-haired, tender little aunt took off 
 his baby clothes and put on him coat and trousers, 
 it was as if she had invested him with the re- 
 galia of some burdensome station. " I could see," 
 he says, " that she felt as I did ; she was sorry 
 for me, but we both knew it had to be ; and for 
 the first time I felt that life was not a plaything 
 but a serious matter." 
 
 Unconsciously he began to feel an aversion to 
 the city ; for the change from the woods and 
 fields of Yasnaya Polyana to the paved and dusty 
 streets of Kazan was not a happy one for a boy 
 who loved the streams and fields, the gathering 
 of mushrooms, the chasing after rabbits, and 
 the play with the peasant children. The oldest 
 brother, Nikolai, came from the Moscow Univer- 
 
 29 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 sity to finish his education at Kazan, and the 
 two younger brothers followed a little later. They 
 had the best tutors that could be found ; a French- 
 man, St. Thomas, later rather disagreeably immor- 
 talized by Tolstoy as St. Jerome in his "Youth," 
 while in the same story the German tutor, Rossel, 
 received glory and honor in the person of Karl 
 Ivanovitch. 
 
 The three older brothers chose the mathemat- 
 ical course, while Leo, somewhat independently, 
 chose the Oriental languages. During the years 
 of 1842 to 1844 he prepared himself in Arabic 
 and Turko-Tartaric, two languages required for 
 entrance examination ; but in spite of the fact 
 that the university authorities were rather 
 easy-going and could be influenced in favor of 
 a poorly prepared student, Tolstoy did not pass 
 his first entrance examination, which he took 
 in 1844. He failed in history, geography, and 
 Latin, but stood well in other languages and in 
 religion. 
 
 In a somewhat roundabout way it was made 
 possible for him to try again. This time, in the 
 fall of the same year, he succeeded, and with 
 not a little pride put on his uniform and sword, 
 
 30 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 the insignia of the university student. However, 
 as he put his mind upon his studies with much 
 less ardor, he failed so badly at the first half- 
 year's examination that it seemed unwise to 
 begin again in the same department, so he dis- 
 continued the study of languages and began 
 to hear lectures on law. His early failure could 
 not have been due to any lack of talent, but 
 rather to an unwillingness on his part to grapple 
 with dry grammatical formulae, for he showed 
 his ability to learn classical languages long after 
 his school years had closed. In fact he was past 
 middle life when he studied Greek and Hebrew, 
 but then he did it in leaps and bounds. Indeed, 
 his teacher in Hebrew, Rabbi Minor of Moscow, 
 says of his pupil of over fifty years of age : " He 
 grasped things quickly, but he read only that 
 which was of especial interest to him ; what he 
 did not like he skipped. We began with Genesis, 
 and went as far as the Prophecy of Isaiah. There 
 he stopped his lessons, for to have traced in the 
 original the development of the prophecies con- 
 cerning the Messiah sufficed him. Grammar he 
 studied only when he thought it was absolutely 
 essential." 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 At Kazan he had scarcely a taste of languages, 
 much of grammar, but most of something else 
 which was very detrimental to study, and that 
 was society. Kazan, a city of forty thousand 
 inhabitants, was then the social as well as the 
 business center of that large portion of the Rus- 
 sian Empire which stretched along the Volga 
 and Kama rivers. No railroads led to either Mos- 
 cow or St. Petersburg, so the aristocrats of that 
 region made Kazan their social capital, where 
 they spent during the winter all that their serfs 
 had earned for them during the summer. Many 
 a fond mother brought her daughters to find 
 a suitable match for them, and university men 
 were held at a premium. Formal dinners fol- 
 lowed one another so quickly that a student did 
 not need to provide for any meal except break- 
 fast. After dinner a siesta was fashionable as 
 well as necessary, for each evening brought a 
 ball or a card party, which lasted until morn- 
 ing. 
 
 Tolstoy's aunt had a home, in which the busy 
 social life made study impossible and failure 
 at examinations a foregone conclusion. In the 
 study of the law he was somewhat more suc- 
 
 32 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 cessful than in his previous attempts, although 
 the law faculty was the poorest imaginable, and 
 lectures such a farce that students from other 
 departments came to them simply to amuse them- 
 selves. Nearly all the professors were Germans 
 who knew as little of Russia's law as they did 
 of its language. 
 
 The student body was sharply divided be- 
 tween the aristocrats and the plebeians, and Tol- 
 stoy was found among his class. Even then, 
 however, he struggled against that necessity, 
 and began the inner battle which he did not 
 finish until many sharp conflicts subdued his 
 natural pride, and made him see in every man 
 a brother. He did not win for himself comrades, 
 and no friendships survived those years in which 
 the making of friends is as great a privilege 
 as the acquisition of knowledge. Those who re- 
 member him as he was at that time speak of 
 him as a very proud and conceited young man, 
 who was nicknamed by his fellows "Philoso- 
 pher " and " Recluse." Unfortunately he found 
 no one who could understand him or to whom 
 he could express himself, and his critical atti- 
 tude toward the coarse pleasures of the plebe- 
 
 33 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 ians, and to the more refined but just as low 
 pleasures of the aristocrats separated him almost 
 completely from his college mates, none of whom 
 rose above the commonplace view of life. Nasar- 
 yef, a colleague of those days, and one who was 
 never drawn toward him, thus describes him at 
 one of the private lectures on Russian literature, 
 delivered by a professor who walked about in 
 his morning gown quite unconscious of the pre- 
 sence of his students : "Tolstoy was one of the 
 most peculiar men I had ever seen ; so full of 
 self-importance and conceit. The professor told 
 something interesting about literature to which 
 this young man listened, and after the lecture 
 was over left without saying good-by." This 
 same Nasaryef spent twenty-four hours with 
 Tolstoy in involuntary confinement for having 
 come late and noisily to the lectures. The pen- 
 alty was not very severe, and was lightened by 
 the fact that the Count's servant was permitted 
 to attend him. Nasaryef continues : 
 
 " As we entered the jail, Tolstoy threw off his 
 fur coat rather angrily, and with his cap on 
 his head walked up and down without paying 
 the least attention to me. He looked out of the 
 
 34 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 barred window, buttoned and unbuttoned his coat 
 nervously, and betrayed in every movement his 
 anger over this uncomfortable and ridiculous 
 position. 
 
 " I lay there with my head buried in my book 
 seemingly paying no attention to what he did, 
 although I was boiling from rage over his in- 
 civility toward me. Suddenly he opened the door 
 and called out peremptorily to his servant, just 
 as if he were at home, ' Tell the coachman to 
 drive up and down in front of the window/ Then 
 this moody and disagreeable young man stood 
 looking out to kill time in some way. I con- 
 tinued to read, but the situation grew painful, 
 and I too stepped to the window. In the street 
 the stiff and sedate coachman drove his horse, 
 now at a trot, and now at a walk, up and down. I 
 said something about the beautiful stallion, 
 one word led to another, and an hour later 
 we were involved in an endless discussion, the 
 warmth of which was intensified by a mutually 
 awakened dislike. First he gave vent to his wrath 
 against history, in words which later he put into 
 the mouth of one of his characters, thus : ' His- 
 tory is only a collection of fables and unnecessary 
 
 35 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 details mixed with a lot of useless dates and 
 names. These dates and names are the only posi- 
 tive things, and the rest, the death of Prince 
 Igor, the story of the snake which bit Oleg the 
 hero, those are fables. And who needs to know 
 that the second marriage of Ivan the Terrible 
 with the daughter of Tomruck was solemnized 
 on the 21st of August, 1562, and his fourth mar- 
 riage with Anna Alexejavna Kallovsky in the 
 year 1572 ? That stuff I have to learn by heart, 
 and if I do not, I get a zero in my examination. 
 And how is this history written ? All of it ac- 
 cording to a pattern which was drawn without 
 reason by the historians themselves. Here is an 
 example of their teaching : " The terrible czar, 
 of whom we have heard from Professor Ivanof, 
 suddenly changes from being a noble, virtuous, 
 and wise ruler, into a senseless, lewd, and cruel 
 tyrant." Why? how? and wherefore ? one is not 
 allowed to ask/ " 
 
 Before Tolstoy left the jail, he gave Nasaryef 
 this parting shot : " We two have the right to 
 leave this temple of wisdom as useful and edu- 
 cated men ; now say it honestly, what are we 
 going to take with us into life out of this sanc- 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 tuary, and of what use are we going to be to 
 society?" 
 
 Not many young men at Kazan asked them- 
 selves or others such a question, and Tolstoy's 
 fame as a " recluse " and " philosopher " was not 
 diminished after Nasaryef reported this first 
 known interview with him, in which he disclosed 
 his views on education views of course influ- 
 enced by the peculiar conditions in the Kazan 
 University, but views which he never changed. 
 
 Tolstoy's aversion to history was increased by 
 his dislike of the professor who occupied that 
 chair, and that the feeling was mutual is indi- 
 cated by this correct account of an examination 
 in his department. Nasaryef reports : " The ar- 
 rival of the bloodthirsty professor is anxiously 
 awaited by the would-be lawyers, who are almost 
 crazed by fear. One after the other they receive 
 their cards and answer the questions as best they 
 can. Finally, it is Count Tolstoy's turn. I was 
 very curious to see how he would distinguish 
 himself, for I had already recognized in him a 
 remarkable young man. Two or three minutes 
 passed ; I still waited anxiously while Tolstoy 
 looked at the list, growing red and pale alter- 
 
 37 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 nately, but remaining silent. The professor asked 
 him to take another card, but the result was the 
 same ; he remained silent. The professor also said 
 nothing, but looked at the badly confused student 
 with an angry jeer. The painful scene was sud- 
 denly ended by Tolstoy, who put the lists back 
 and walked out of the room, without looking at 
 any one or saying a word. ' A zero ; he will get 
 a zero/ whispered the students one to the other, 
 while I was nearly moved to tears by sympathy. 
 The aristocrats who stood around, festively clad 
 as if for a ball, and many of whom had to ex- 
 pect the same fate, told one another that a num- 
 ber of ladies of the highest nobility had been to 
 see the professor, and had pleaded with him not 
 to give Tolstoy a ' I/ which meant failure. They 
 had implored him so long that he granted their 
 request, and gave the Count a zero, which was 
 of course worse." 
 
 Tolstoy's dislike of history and failure in it 
 were due no doubt to the same causes as his dis- 
 like of languages and failure in them. To study 
 the technical part of any subject was distasteful 
 to him ; if he studied, he wanted to know just why 
 he studied, and he preferred to solve the pro- 
 
 38 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 blems of history, rather than to trouble himself 
 by names and dates. That he had a proper, 
 although somewhat exaggerated, view of the 
 faults in the teaching of both languages and 
 history, the pedagogic development of the last 
 twenty-five years has proved. In languages we 
 show to-day the body before the bones, the living 
 language before the rigid frame, the grammar. 
 In history we find the wherefore of the event 
 more important than its correct placing in the 
 calendar. Only one professor at Kazan knew how 
 to attract this early ripe mind, and that one 
 was Professor J. D. Meier, who lectured on civil 
 law. He won Tolstoy by assigning him the work 
 of comparing the " Sketch of the New Code of 
 Laws of Katherine the Great " with Montes- 
 quieu's " L'Esprit des Lois." This was the kind of 
 work now largely carried on in modern univer- 
 sities, and known as the " seminar." But it held 
 Tolstoy's complete attention, and proved his only 
 successful and profitable work at Kazan. What 
 he was to experience as a man had already be- 
 gun its premonitions in his soul. He had com- 
 menced climbing the mountain, whose height he 
 was to reach through self-denial ; although every 
 
 39 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 moment his feet were slipping, and he seemed 
 to have lost his faith and all foundations for 2 
 moral life. That which has made so many slij 
 and fall never to rise again, the difference be- 
 tween the professions and the practice of Chris- 
 tians, was already his stumbling-block ; and his 
 aunt's pious prayers and impious ambitions, hei 
 singing of heaven and helping to create around 
 her a social hell, were not the least of the causes 
 which drove him to a complete bankruptcy oi 
 faith ; so that when he was eighteen years oi 
 age he had lost all of God that he brought with 
 him into this world from the other. " I remem- 
 ber," says this treasurer of his own childhood's 
 thoughts, " when I was eleven years old, how 2 
 schoolmate came to me and told me that there 
 is no God, and that we all received this state- 
 ment as a piece of strange news ; something 
 possible but not probable. Furthermore, I re- 
 member," he says, " how I went walking along 
 the lake in the springtime, on the day of my ex- 
 amination, how I prayed to God that I might pass 
 successfully, and I recall how, after I had learned 
 the catechism, word for word, I knew that it was 
 all untrue." Suddenly he came to his conclusions 
 
 40 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 and decision, and threw things overboard, only 
 to weight himself immediately, by new problems. 
 Thus at the age of sixteen years he was al- 
 ready fighting a moral battle within himself 
 and was trying to find some solid basis for his 
 lofty and wandering thoughts. Alone, under the 
 beeches of Yasnaya Polyana, during long vaca- 
 tions, he went through the real schooling which 
 he sought. The old and the new philosophy, fu- 
 gitive volumes from the classics, and the moderns, 
 who began to move and think, were his teachers, 
 while at the same time he tried to bring them all 
 to that highest of tests, already unconsciously 
 established in his life, the law of Jesus, which 
 to him was to be the only law. Like the One 
 who was to be his Master, he was among the 
 teachers asking questions, and had he been in 
 the school of Athens, or at Jerusalem, rather 
 than in the stiff, cold atmosphere of Kazan, he 
 might have learned more and scorned much less. 
 He lost himself in thought, and finally, by think- 
 ing about his thinking he entered into an end- 
 less labyrinth, and began that self -analysis, that 
 hard reasoning, which rested completely upon 
 reason and yet broke from it at every point. His 
 
 41 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 university studies were never completed, and 
 while he may not have known more than his 
 teachers, as he at one time claimed, he knew better 
 than they, or at least he honestly determined to 
 know better, even if it led him away from the 
 usual sources of knowledge. His brothers had 
 finished their courses at the university, and he 
 found himself more alone than ever. He was at 
 that time like a volcano, thrown out upon the Rus- 
 sian plain, and asking the reason for his being and 
 the end of it all ; he was conscious of his isolation, 
 conscious of some strange light, some burning 
 fire, yet he began to realize that it was wrong for 
 him to stand upon his height, to consume his fire 
 or be consumed uselessly by it. As little as he 
 was at home in the university, so little was he 
 at home in that society of which his aunt's house 
 was the center. He was roughly made, sharp- 
 eyed, and angular in speech and movement. He 
 says of himself, " I was shy by nature, but my 
 shyness was increased by the consciousness of 
 my homeliness. I am_satisfied_ .that nothing_so 
 determines the_direction of .adman's life as just 
 Ws ftYten'nr r whp.tjifiy he is attractive or not" 
 Wherever Tolstoy draws himself he makes him- 
 
 42 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 self as unattractive and shy as he really was. 
 This lack of personal beauty may have helped 
 him to break suddenly from that society which 
 never held him, but which was to reach out her 
 seductive arms to him again and again and 
 keep him awhile in her embrace. 
 
 Pushed aside or having stepped aside, or both, 
 he had a fine vantage-ground from which to 
 watch the hollowness and the folly of it all ; the 
 ungenuineness of its affection, the madness of 
 its whirl, and the horror and degradation of its 
 aim and end. He had a passion to be good, to 
 find a kindred soul with kindred longings, but if 
 he expressed such a thought he was laughed at. 
 He says, "When I gave myself up to ignoble 
 passions they praised me : I was encouraged in 
 being conceited, domineering, angry, revengeful. 
 All that was highly commended." After more 
 than thirty years he said in his " Confessions " : 
 " I cannot think of this time without fear, repug- 
 nance, and heartache ; in every fiber of my being 
 I wanted to be good, but I was young, I was pas- 
 sionate, and I was alone whenever I sought the 
 good." Yes, he was alone as all the seekers are ; 
 he was in a narrow path, where the two or three 
 
 43 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 seldom walk together, but each for himself passes 
 through the temptations in the wilderness. On 
 the 12th of April, 1847, Tolstoy petitioned the 
 dean to permit him to withdraw from the uni- 
 versity on account of his health and his personal 
 affairs. On the 14th he received his papers and 
 soon after left Kazan for Yasnaya Polyaria. 
 
 44 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE LANDED PROPRIETOR 
 
 TOLSTOY did not enter upon his work at Yasnaya 
 Polyana without meeting the opposition of his 
 aunt and the ridicule of his brothers. In that 
 autobiographical sketch, "Mornings of a Landed 
 Proprietor," he speaks frankly of his experiences 
 at that period. The hero of the story writes his 
 aunt of his determination to live for the pea- 
 sants, whom he has found in a wretched condi- 
 tion, out of which he feels that he must save 
 them, a work which seems to him more neces- 
 sary than the continuation of his studies, and 
 which he can do without academic training or a 
 university diploma. He closes the letter by say- 
 ing : " Do not tell my brother ; I am afraid of his 
 ridicule. 
 
 The aunt in the story, who no doubt repre- 
 sents his own relative, replies : " I have grown 
 to be fifty years of age, and known many re- 
 spectable people, but I have never heard that 
 
 45 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 a young man of good family and much talent 
 should bury himself in a village under the pre- 
 text of doing good to the peasants." The Rus- 
 sian young men of good family were living off the 
 peasants, and not one of them had yet dreamt of 
 living for them. The peasant was a serf, not 
 much better than an animal in the estimation of 
 his owner, and the nobler instincts of both lord 
 and serf were crushed, or remained undeveloped 
 by that nefarious institution, slavery. Most of 
 the land-owners lived in the cities or traveled in 
 foreign lands, where they spent even more than 
 could be earned for them by the serfs, left in 
 charge of unscrupulous managers, who ground 
 out of them all they could ; and in the grinding 
 process both the nobility and peasantry came 
 near irreparable ruin. The slavery in the South 
 of our own country had similar yet different 
 effects, because in Russia the slaves were of the 
 same blood as their masters, with only a super- 
 ficial culture and the right of possession to dif- 
 ferentiate the two classes, so that the reflex action 
 was immediate and severe. Tolstoy discovered 
 the danger to both, and recognized in the peasant 
 his kinsman, simple and unspoiled, who needed, 
 
 46 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 as he thought, but to have his faults pointed out 
 to him, to remedy them quickly and completely. 
 He went to his task with a holy enthusiasm and 
 with no little heart-searching as to whether 
 after all he was not doing it selfishly and with 
 a desire to be odd, two faults of which he was 
 always conscious and against which he was man- 
 fully struggling. He went to Yasnaya Polyana 
 because he wished to give to his life a purpose 
 which could be an answer to the question that 
 was always ringing in his ears : " Why am I in 
 the world ? " Here in this ruined village, among 
 these peasants, with centuries of woe upon their 
 shoulders, he would work as a redeeming force. 
 " I have thought much about my responsibilities 
 in the future," he says in that letter to his aunt. 
 " I have set up certain maxims for my actions, 
 and if God will give me life and strength, my 
 plans shall be carried out." No doubt the desire 
 to live among the peasants was fostered by the 
 reading of Rousseau, who made such a great 
 impression upon Tolstoy that he now says of 
 that period : " I idolized Rousseau to such an 
 extent that I wanted to wear his portrait on my 
 breast beside the saint's picture." 
 
 47 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 Tolstoy worshiped Rousseau, largely because 
 he recognized in him one whose spirit was akin 
 to his, and because Rousseau expressed plainly 
 what was as yet confused in his own brain ; the 
 feeling that something was wrong, that the con- 
 trasts in society were too great, that the culture 
 which he saw and in which he lived was only a 
 varnished barbarism : these things he had felt 
 for a long time, and Rousseau's call for a return 
 to unspoiled nature harmonized with his feelings 
 and found a ready response. 
 
 Tolstoy's course also caused much shaking of 
 heads among the peasants, who could understand 
 his attitude even less than did his aristocratic 
 relatives. To the peasants the coming of the 
 owner of Yasnaya Polyana was always some- 
 thing to be feared, for it meant that money nad 
 run low, that debts were pressing, and that new 
 methods of getting money out of the serfs and out 
 of the soil had to be invented. They used to be 
 called before the master to hear of additional ex- 
 penses which they must bear, and with threats and 
 curses to have loaded upon them burdens which 
 grew so heavy that the poor creatures became 
 benumbed even to any feeling of grief or oppo- 
 
 48 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 sition. Now they were called together on Sundays 
 to unburden themselves, to bring their complaints 
 and ask for such assistance as they might need. 
 They were always suspicious of their masters, 
 but when one came with kindness they were still 
 more so. They were always told untruth and they 
 answered in the same coin ; they were robbed, and 
 in return they stole whatever they could ; they 
 and their masters lived in two worlds, each un- 
 known to the other, and were not only estranged 
 but antagonistic. All the elaborate system which 
 Tolstoy organized to uplift them the peasants 
 regarded only as a new method of getting more 
 work and more money out of them, so that the 
 experiment had to fail and did; not only be- 
 cause they were suspicious. It failed also because 
 the peasants are naturally impassive and do not 
 even now care to be disturbed. Tolstoy built 
 them model houses into which no one would 
 move, even out of huts which might at any time 
 bury their inmates ; huts which were damp and 
 dark and not as comfortable as some stables. 
 Yes, the peasant asked for wood to repair them, 
 and if it had been given him, he probably would 
 have sold it or used it for firewood ; but to move 
 
 49 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 into a new house, sanitarily built, " no, indeed 
 not, they are veritable fortresses, not homes." 
 Home to him was a broken-down shack, the un- 
 used manure lying about the door, another hut 
 in the same condition, leaning in a neighborly and 
 confidential way against his, and the odorifer- 
 ous village pond right under his nose. " Leave us 
 here," the peasants pleaded, " do not drive us out 
 of our nest into a strange world," the strange 
 world being not a mile from the center of the 
 village. " Why don't you fertilize your field ? " 
 Tolstoy asked a peasant who was complaining 
 about his own poverty and that of his soil. 
 " Your honor," he replied, " it is n't the manure 
 which makes the grain grow, but God ; God does 
 everything." At every point Tolstoy was met by 
 poverty, lies, and an unwillingness or inability 
 to respond to most generous help. The school he 
 built remained empty, the model houses were 
 uninhabited, while the peasants remained just 
 as they were, and perhaps lazier if not less hon- 
 est because they had been met by gentleness and 
 love. It was not a feeling of disappointment 
 which filled Tolstoy at his failure, but rather a 
 feeling of shame that men could be so crushed 
 
 So 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 by adverse conditions that they could not feel 
 kindness or respond to it, and that a life of self- 
 denial for the sake of others should be such an 
 impossibility. He began to realize the distance 
 between himself and those whom he desired to 
 help, and to feel that the only way to reach 
 them would be to change the relation between 
 master and servant, and himself become " like 
 him that serveth," His experiences also sug- 
 gested the question, whether, after all, the pea- 
 sant's life is not the best one ; whether the serf 
 who works hard and sleeps off his weariness in 
 the fragrant hay is not the happier man ; and 
 whether that half vagabond and half peasant, 
 " Ilyushka," who harnesses his horses and drives 
 from city to city seeing land and people, earn- 
 ing his chance ruble and spending it for food 
 and drink, whether his life is not the happier 
 one ; and he closes his reflections by saying : 
 " Why may I not be like Ilyushka ? " He already 
 begins to think about sinking himself into his 
 people, but the desire to know more draws him 
 to St. Petersburg, where he halts among many 
 opinions, now wishing to enter the government 
 service as an official, and again planning to join 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 the army on its way to Hungary, where it is to 
 help Austria in the suppression of a good-sized 
 rebellion. Finally he enters the university, lis- 
 tens indifferently to lectures on law and passes 
 some kind of examination, without having studied 
 anything; for he spends the nights carousing 
 and the days sleeping, and deadening his con- 
 science by drink. In the spring of the year 1849 
 he returned to Yasnaya Polyana, not as a re- 
 former, but as a man who needed to be reformed. 
 This time he did not come alone ; he had picked 
 up in St. Petersburg a piece of wrecked human- 
 ity, a German musician whom he found on the 
 outer edge of society, ready to drop to his ruin, 
 whom he carried home to nurse back to health. 
 With him he began enthusiastically the study of 
 music, and was initiated into the mysteries of 
 the German tone-world, to which he had been a 
 total stranger. He had known only that music 
 which Russian society cultivated, which was as 
 superficial and as light as its own moral fiber. 
 Now he learned to love the severe and express- 
 ive qualities of Bach, of Gluck, and of Beetho- 
 ven, becoming a passionate lover of the latter's 
 compositions. About this time Tolstoy's brother, 
 
 52 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 Sergei, came into the tuneful atmosphere of 
 Yasnaya Polyana, but as a disturbing element, 
 for he was passionately fond of gypsies, and 
 brought a horde of them to make merry for him 
 and his companions. The Russian gypsies are 
 professional merry-makers, and although poor, 
 are a rather expensive luxury, which only the 
 rich can afford. They are found in nearly every 
 pleasure resort in Moscow, picturesquely clad, 
 swift and graceful in their movements, dancing 
 wildly and singing joyously, the women with 
 their dark and fiery eyes kindling the sluggish 
 blood of the pleasure-loving Russian aristocracy. 
 The gypsy is never sorrowful, for he has no his- 
 tory to sadden him by its defeats, no prophets 
 to burden him by their mission, and no moral 
 code to give inconvenient twinges to his con- 
 science. He is the best plaything that a Rus- 
 sian noble can find, although not seldom proving 
 his moral and financial ruin. Sergei married one 
 of these gypsy women, and almost persuaded 
 Tolstoy to do the same thing. Yasnaya Polyana 
 came again into its former glory; there were 
 wild music, dancing, gambling, and hunting; 
 sleigh-rides behind fast horses, excursions to 
 
 53 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 Moscow, and debauches which lasted for weeks, 
 with scarcely any time between to become sober. 
 In the two years since Tolstoy's failure as a re- 
 former, his beautiful dream of being with nature 
 and living for others had changed into a hor- 
 rible nightmare of vulgar excesses, and he him- 
 self had sunk to the level of a common gambler 
 in whom the passion had grown to be almost a 
 mania. Vainly did the oldest brother, Nikolai, 
 who was much devoted to him, try to persuade 
 him to enter the army and go with him to the 
 Caucasus; he preferred the "broad" life of Mos- 
 cow where he could "eat, drink, and be merry," 
 and let the morrow take care of itself. Nowhere 
 in the world is sin quite so seductive as it is in 
 and around Moscow, unless it be in Paris ; but 
 there one reaches bottom much sooner, and a 
 sensitive conscience quickly begins its accusa- 
 tions. In Moscow pleasure comes with oriental 
 sweetness and gentleness; it rocks the con- 
 science to sleep while it keeps the passions 
 awake. Moscow holds one in her warm embrace 
 as if she were a rich and delicate fur coat which 
 shields from cold and hardship ; she spoils one 
 for life without making one dissatisfied by it. 
 
 54 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 Moscow has a Puritanism of form, but not of 
 conscience; she has countless churches and no 
 preachers. The worst excesses are not only tol- 
 erated by society but also encouraged, and had it 
 not been for Tolstoy's ever-accusing conscience, 
 and his keen, self -analyzing mind, he would have 
 gone to the bottom, without, of course, losing his 
 place at the top. There are elegant mansions on 
 Moscow's boulevards whose purpose is not quite 
 known to the uninitiated. Until daybreak rest- 
 less horses and patient coachmen wait in front 
 of them for their masters, who come out sobered 
 by severe losses or doubly intoxicated by excess- 
 ive drink and their winnings at games of 
 chance. At such places Tolstoy was a frequent 
 visitor and a constant loser ; with dogged deter- 
 mination he placed his fortune upon the whirl- 
 ing wheel until heavy debts pressed him sorely, 
 and the sham and the shame of it all drove him 
 one day back to Yasnaya Polyana, and from 
 there to the Caucasus. He desired to run away 
 from a society which was so attractive and yet 
 so repulsive, which had exacted from him its 
 tribute, and had now so grievously burdened 
 him by its dubious reward. 
 
 55 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE CAUCASUS 
 
 "THEN why did you come to the Caucasus?" Tol- 
 stoy asks one of his characters, who answers : 
 "Do you know why? because in Russia we believe 
 that the Caucasus is a country, for all sorts of 
 unfortunate people, but oh ! how disappointed 
 we all are ! " "I am not," the interlocutor replies; 
 "I love the Caucasus now more than ever, but in 
 a different way." 
 
 This last phrase rightly expresses Tolstoy's at- 
 titude toward that country. He did not love it as 
 Lermantoff and Puschkin loved it, for its scenic 
 beauty, for its virgin snow, for its laurel and acacia, 
 for the sweet notes of its nightingales, for the 
 possibility of forgetting and being forgotten ; he 
 loved it and still loves it because here in this utter 
 desolation he " came to himself." Here was the 
 prodigal's first " far country," in which " no man 
 gave unto him." Here he learned to know that 
 large and sorrowful company, the ills of the hu- 
 
 56 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 man race, hunger, cold, hardship, sickness, dan- 
 ger, death, and fear of death. To him nature spoke 
 in human terms ; in its beauty and power, in its 
 heights and depths he saw the divine forces ; not 
 as opiates for dreams and artificial ecstasies, but 
 forces for human redemption. He was not moved 
 to a glorification of that which was already glori- 
 ous, and in a night when he felt all those myste- 
 rious sounds melting into an harmonious quiet, 
 " when all the manifold, scarce audible movements 
 of nature which one can hardly grasp or under- 
 stand, flowed together into one full, majestic voice 
 which we call the silence of the night," which men 
 disturbed by the preparation for battle, he asked 
 himself : " Is it really so hard for men to live in this 
 glorious world, under this immeasurable, starry 
 sky ? Is it possible that in the midst of this en- 
 chanting nature, the human soul can harbor feel- 
 ings of envy and revenge or the desire to exter- 
 minate a like being ? It seems to me that all the 
 evil must disappear out of the heart at the touch 
 with nature, that immediate expression of the 
 beautiful and the good." 
 
 In the year 1851 Tolstoy came to the Caucasus, 
 burdened by his conscience and his debts. He lived 
 
 57 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 in the simplest way possible, among the people, to 
 whom he now gave himself as utterly and unself- 
 ishly as he had given himself in Yasnaya Polyana. 
 He paid five dollars a month rent for a peasant's 
 isba, lived on black bread and the meat which he 
 brought from the hunt, and listened ardently to 
 the simple speech of his companions, drawing for 
 mental and spiritual strength upon everything 
 which touched him. In company with a simple- 
 minded Cossack he tramped through isolated re- 
 gions; and one day after having caught a hawk 
 (which is used in the Caucasus for hunting pur- 
 poses), and being much elated over it, he came 
 quite unexpectedly upon an officer who proved 
 to be his near relative and an adjutant to the 
 commanding general. He persuaded Tolstoy to 
 take service in the army ; and after some difficulty 
 with the authorities about his papers, he passed 
 the necessary examination at Tiflis and donned 
 the soldier's uniform. He became a non-commis- 
 sioned officer in an artillery regiment which was 
 stationed on the Terek River, a tumultuous moun- 
 tain stream, on whose shores lived an equally un- 
 tamed and rebellious people, the natives of the 
 Caucasus, who always " fought for freedom on 
 
 58 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 the heights." They carried on an unsuccessful 
 guerrilla warfare which kept the Russian army 
 busy for decades, and gave many a young soldier 
 his baptism of fire. Although the service was 
 dangerous and at times arduous, it did not keep 
 the busy mind of Tolstoy sufficiently engaged. 
 Much as he loved the wild life he lived and the 
 close touch with the Russian soldiers, of whom he 
 was always fond, he was tortured by homesickness; 
 and Yasnaya Polyana with its white birch forests, 
 its gentle undulations and its simple peasant folk 
 was often before his eyes. It was perhaps natural 
 that when death so often stared him in the face, 
 he should think much of his childhood and that 
 he should desire to fasten these pictures upon 
 paper. So he wrote his first story in a soldier's 
 tent, little dreaming of his literary career or the 
 success of these simple memories of his early 
 years. On the 5th of July, 1852, he sent the story 
 "My Childhood" to St. Petersburg, where it 
 was immediately accepted as the first attempt of 
 a great genius who later verified all expectations. 
 On the 25th of November he received a very en- 
 couraging letter from his publisher ; and by the 
 light of the camp-fire he saw himself proclaimed 
 
 59 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 a successful author, although without pay, for 
 there was no check inclosed. 
 
 He had not waited to hear the fate of his first 
 work, but by this time had already sketched "The 
 Mornings of a Russian Land-owner" and "My 
 Boyhood," the last named to be a continuation of 
 " My Childhood " and part of a long story in auto- 
 biographical form which was to reach its culmina- 
 tion in "Manhood." This work, however, was 
 never completed. 
 
 The period in which Tolstoy began his liter- 
 ary career was an important one in the history 
 of Russian letters. Dostoyef sky, Gogolj, and Tur- 
 genieff had dipped their pens into the blood- 
 drops of the serf and the exile, and had written 
 in a prophetic way of " the hurt of my people." 
 They had cut loose Russian literature from the 
 romanticism of Schiller and Byron, and had given 
 the world pictures, not of the passions of the 
 flesh, but of the thralldom of " Dead Souls." So 
 the way was prepared for Tolstoy, and his star 
 rose upon a night which already had written 
 upon it the prophecy of a brighter morning. 
 " May God grant Tolstoy a long life, and I hope 
 he will surprise us yet, for his is a talent of the 
 
 60 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 first order." So wrote Turgenieff to a friend, at 
 the time of Tolstoy's debut as an author. In- 
 deed, this first effort, which scarcely can be called 
 a story, had in it not only the prophecy of 
 greater things, but also their foundations. With 
 truth and sincerity he struck the first note about 
 the self and the inner life, and it vibrates in all 
 his works with growing strength. This is as 
 rare in literature as it is in life ; but the desire 
 for an open confession, for perfect self-exami- 
 nation and purification, which is so characteris- 
 tic of Tolstoy's literary life, manifests itself in 
 this, his first work. The little boy, Nikolenka, 
 stands at the coffin of his mother and thus 
 describes his feelings : " I was very miserable 
 because my new coat, which they had put on 
 me, was so uncomfortable around the shoulders ; 
 I was careful not to get my trousers dusty, 
 and I stealthily examined all my surroundings." 
 Older people than Nikolenka have felt the same 
 way, but they have never confessed it. The con- 
 trast which Tolstoy has drawn between the Prin- 
 cess Kornakova, Prince Ivan Ivanovitch, and the 
 common people around them ; the half -educated 
 tutor, the peasant Grisha, and the dear old nurse 
 
 61 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 reveal that love and appreciation of the " other 
 half" which has given to his life its direction, 
 and has made him the revealer of the Russian 
 mujik. 
 
 Another characteristic of his later works also 
 manifests itself here, in his hatred of common- 
 place phrases : he loves and admires the genu- 
 ine. Nikolenka, the hero of his first story, says : 
 "The words of comfort, that it is well with her 
 over there, and that she was too good for this 
 world, roused in me the feeling of anger." 
 But in the corner of the hall he sees the old 
 nurse kneeling ; she does not weep, but mutely 
 stretches out her hand toward God ; and he re- 
 alizes that she alone loved his mother truly. He 
 goes to her and finds comfort because she is 
 really bowed by grief, and is not mourning to 
 be seen by others. Speaking of her death, he 
 says : " She dies peacefully, without regret and 
 without fear, because she has retained her sim- 
 ple, childlike faith, and because her life has 
 been according to the law of the Gospel, with all 
 its sacrifices and labors." 
 
 Thus early, Tolstoy recognized the spirit of 
 that Gospel whose herald he was to be, and 
 
 62 
 
V? 
 
 fe. tw 
 
 ISS'^xJ - 1 ; > 
 
 .^^^-^4^ \-V V* ''& 
 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 which he also would try to live in all its sim- 
 plicity and with all its rigor. Yet, unconscious 
 of the great future before him, he asked himself 
 at the close of the story of his childhood, " Has 
 Providence united me to these two souls only to 
 let me mourn for them ? " 
 
 The next story, " Mornings of a Landed Pro- 
 prietor," was still only a picture of his own 
 soul life into which the portraiture of other 
 characters scarcely entered. It was to remain 
 practically the groundwork of all his stories ; as 
 he was to tell only what he saw with his own 
 eyes and felt in his own heart. He experienced 
 everything which happened to his characters; 
 and instinctively, one feels that what he has 
 written is in a large measure the autobiography 
 of his own soul. In the " Mornings of a Landed 
 Proprietor" he shows us the first noble passions 
 of his life, and to purify that life by self-denial 
 and sacrifice, to become a stepping-stone for 
 his neighbor's good, to enter into the huts and 
 hearts of the lowly, these are the first struggle, 
 the first great battle in which he is driven back, 
 but not defeated. 
 
 Although there was the momentary reaction 
 63 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 in his aspirations, he finds in the Caucasus his 
 full strength, and his soul again rises Godward ; 
 in spite of towering mountains, his keen eyes 
 see the poor, struggling mountaineer; and in 
 spite of the battle, where drums beat and flags 
 wave, he sees nothing but the soldiers, and 
 hears nothing but the voices of the living, who 
 are soon to die. Thus his stories from the 
 battles in the Caucasus plainly show their deep 
 human interest. In " The Sortie, the Story of a 
 Volunteer," the only story of the Caucasus 
 which he completed there, Tolstoy tenderly and 
 sympathetically draws the Russian soldier with 
 all his faults and virtues. In Captain Chlopoff, 
 who came up from the people, he personifies 
 the genuine Russian soul, uncomplaining, not 
 boastful, and perfectly honest. The captain 
 serves in the Caucasus, as he frankly con- 
 fesses, not because of his love of war or of 
 honor, but because of the war pay, with which 
 he supports an aged mother and his only sister. 
 When he defines bravery as "doing what one 
 ought to do," Tolstoy's sarcasm strikes the man 
 who is vainly boastful. In contrast to the French- 
 men who have uttered memorable words in the 
 
 64 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 face of death, he says : " Between their bravery 
 and the captain's there is this difference : in 
 case a lofty thought should move in the breast 
 of my hero, he would not express it ; first, be- 
 cause of a fear that if he uttered the great 
 word he might spoil the great work ; and sec- 
 ondly, because when a man feels in himself 
 strength for a great work, he finds words su- 
 perfluous." In this story Tolstoy draws for the 
 first time the horrors of war ; and already we 
 recognize in him a soul which, although brave, 
 and without fear of death, shrinks not only from 
 the suffering of others, but even from describ- 
 ing it. The first bullet that strikes human flesh 
 immediately destroys for him the interesting 
 picture of the battle. "Why should I tell the 
 details of this terrible spectacle," he asks, " when 
 I would give much to forget all about it my- 
 self ? " Yet with a few broad strokes, without 
 much color or detail, he tells us everything. A 
 young lieutenant just from the school bench, 
 with the traditional idea of bravery in his mind, 
 throws himself at the foe hidden in the forest. 
 He is accompanied by about thirty soldiers, who 
 soon come back, carrying the wounded officer. To 
 
 65 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 the encouraging jests with which he is met by 
 his comrades, he scarcely gives an answer. The 
 surgeon, ready for work, rolls up his sleeves, 
 and with a stereotyped smile says : "It seems to 
 have blown a hole into your skin ; let us see." 
 The lieutenant tries to sit up, but the look which 
 he gives the physician, although unnoticed by 
 him, is full of surprise and accusation. The sur- 
 geon begins to examine the wound from every 
 side ; but the injured man loses his patience, and 
 pushes his hand back with a heavy sigh. " Leave 
 me," he says, in a scarcely audible voice ; " never 
 mind me, I am dying ; " and in five minutes this 
 first tragedy of the battlefield is over. 
 
 Still deeper out of his Caucasus experience 
 Tolstoy drew two other sketches : " The Wood- 
 cutters," and " The Meeting with a Moscow Ac- 
 quaintance." In the first story he sharply char- 
 acterizes the Russian soldiers and divides them 
 into three main classes : the obedient, the com- 
 manding, and the reckless. He uses the story 
 to draw each class, doing it with such skill that 
 we at once feel ourselves acquainted with all of 
 them. He does not analyze or describe the char- 
 acter, but he shows us the man through a word 
 
 66 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 which he speaks or the work which he does. In 
 the second sketch he describes an aristocratic 
 youth, fallen to the lowest level, with all man- 
 hood crushed out of him by his vicious life. 
 This is a type not rare in Russia, and which 
 may be found wherever the scum of society 
 settles. Nechludoff, the narrator of the story, 
 had met this youth three or four years before, 
 in the home of his sister, which was one of the 
 best in Moscow ; and this short time had sufficed 
 to bring him so low that now he is a drunkard, 
 a companion of the lowest camp-followers, and 
 quite incapable of thinking an honest thought. 
 Tolstoy has often in later stories pictured just 
 such cases, in which men fell suddenly from the 
 highest planes of culture to the lowest depths, 
 and he always shows that keen insight which 
 comes from personal experience and contact with 
 those unfortunate and sinful ones, who found 
 him ever ready to help and to sympathize. In 
 his portrayal of such men, one always feels 
 that although he does not spare them in de- 
 picting their faults, their deep, inner decayed 
 self, he does it with the thought, " it might have 
 been I ; " and one cannot despise them, although 
 
 67 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 they are far from lovable. Moreover, they are to 
 represent a class, that higher class of Moscow 
 and St. Petersburg, where culture is at its best 
 and worst, where lives are crushed out politely, 
 where fortunes are ruined suavely, and where 
 character is destroyed without breach of eti- 
 quette. Tolstoy puts such people beside the poor 
 and ignorant, who have not lost their better 
 selves in houses of many rooms, but have lived in 
 huts, close to the soil and close to God. They 
 did not search for glory, neither did they yield 
 up life in dishonor. How magnificent is that 
 poor common soldier, "Velentzuk," who in his 
 death agony draws out his pocket-book, and 
 wants to pay his debts ; who, always honest, 
 wishes to leave this life an honest man still. 
 There is no hypocrisy about this; it is done 
 simply, naturally, and in strong contrast to those 
 aristocratic officers who can speak in two lan- 
 guages and not keep their word in one. 
 
 Although in these stories Tolstoy deals with 
 one subject, war, and with one class, the soldier, 
 he does not describe war as a massing of troops, 
 a march and countermarch, but rather as a strug- 
 gle between individuals. Although the battlefield 
 
 68 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 which he describes in other stories is greater 
 and the strife involves nations, he never loses 
 this peculiarity which gives his stories such charm 
 and adds not a little to their horror. Moreover, 
 he is never intoxicated by powder smoke, by the 
 waving of flags, or by the fervor of patriotism ; 
 he does not gloat over the slain of the foe, nor 
 does he weep over a lost cause. He sees war as 
 one might see it who belongs to both sides; 
 and to him blood and tears have the same color, 
 no matter under what flag they are shed. 
 
 Confessedly out of this Caucasus period, though 
 written much better, comes his first long and well- 
 rounded story, " The Cossacks." Most of the in- 
 cidents in it were told him by an officer during a 
 night's journey, but he has concentrated every- 
 thing upon his hero, in whom we quickly recognize 
 the author himself. Olenin, as the hero is called, 
 is a youth of twenty-four years who has learned 
 much, but knows very little ; who has planned to 
 do great things and has never accomplished any- 
 thing. At the age of eighteen, he had no burdens, 
 no responsibilities, and gave no bounds to his 
 physical and moral excesses. He had faith in no- 
 thing, and hoped for nothing ; he had no family, 
 
 69 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 no God, and no fatherland. He did not believe in 
 women, yet hungered inwardly for love ; he looked 
 down upon earthly honor, yet was glad when a 
 prince spoke to him. He devoted himself to art, 
 to society, and to work only until it became labor. 
 Suddenly he drops everything and goes to the 
 Caucasus, drawn by visions of fair women, high 
 mountains, and freedom ; and there, far away from 
 his Moscow acquaintances, he begins the new life, 
 conscious that the old one was wrong and that 
 he has lived to no purpose. He comes into the 
 home of a Cossack officer, makes the acquaint- 
 ance of his beautiful daughter, and promptly falls 
 in love with her. He also meets her lover, Luk- 
 ashka, the bravest young Cossack of the camp ; 
 and above all, he gains the friendship of the 
 hunter, Yeroshka, whose simple philosophy of 
 life so impresses him that he decides to throw off 
 everything of the past and remain in this wilder- 
 ness. Nevertheless, he realizes that his aim in 
 life is other than theirs, and that an unbridgable 
 gulf divides them. He learns this through Mar- 
 yanka, the girl whom he passionately loves, but 
 who cannot in the least respond to his feelings, so 
 he leaves the camp, and as his troyka is about to 
 
 70 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 start, Maryanka steps to the door without showing 
 the least sign of emotion. 
 
 Two thoughts which began to manifest them- 
 selves in his first story come out strongly in "The 
 Cossacks," and increase in power in every one of 
 his future works. First, the purification and de- 
 velopment of the self through casting off the preju- 
 dices and evil effects of our culture ; and secondly, 
 that where such culture has not penetrated, we 
 find the virtues which society must make its 
 own for the sake of its true growth and salvation. 
 These two thoughts he brings out everywhere in 
 the same way the first by that sharp analysis 
 of the self in which he sees not only himself but 
 all the people of his class caught in the same 
 meshes, spoiled by the same culture, and whom he 
 unsparingly analyzes, probes and condemns. The 
 second thought he develops by drawing the char- 
 acteristics of the common people whom he sees 
 unspoiled, as they came from the hands of the 
 creator. As a sculptor who finds the proper clay 
 and tenderly and firmly touches and moulds it, 
 he uses this coarse material to show what in it is 
 lovely ; yet forgetting that, like the sculptor, he 
 himself often creates that beauty. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 SEBASTOPOL 
 
 IN 1853 Tolstoy left the Caucasus, more dissatis- 
 fied with himself than ever. Love and war had 
 destroyed the quiet and the peace which he had 
 enjoyed the first few months, and his awakened 
 and appreciated talent had worked havoc with his 
 decision to live always among the Cossacks. The 
 desire for self-effacement gave place to a conscious 
 craving for an audience, and he left the lonely 
 mountain regions for Moscow and Yasnaya Pol- 
 yana. He found Russia on the eve of the Crimean 
 war, which brought so little glory to the victors and 
 so much untold suffering to all the nations involved 
 in it. Tolstoy asked to be reassigned to the army, 
 and it speaks much for his courage that he asked 
 to be sent to the division on the Danube which was 
 then face to face with the opposing Turk. After 
 a brief visit to Yasnaya, he went by way of Buka- 
 rest to his regiment, where in its attempt to keep 
 Omar Pasha from crossing the Danube it suffered 
 
 72 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 its first defeat. Tolstoy was also present at the 
 siege of Silistra, where Turkish soldiers under 
 German officers, after defending the fortification 
 which was almost blown to pieces, drove the be- 
 sieging army across the Pruth and the Danube. 
 From Silistra he went to Yassy, and from there 
 to the Crimea and the besieged Sebastopol which 
 was the center of the war, the gateway into Russia. 
 Before its walls the allied armies of England, 
 France, Sardinia and Turkey lay for eleven months, 
 struggling with the resistant Russian soldiers, who, 
 behind the earthworks thrown up hastily, fought 
 bravely and with renewed zeal, in spite of the 
 never-ceasing and murderous fire of the enemy. 
 In three sketches, " Sebastopol, December 1854, 
 May 1855, and August 1855," Tolstoy describes 
 his experiences during the eleven months of the 
 siege, during which he was commander of an 
 artillery brigade and present in every important 
 engagement. He leads the reader through the 
 city while it has not yet quite lost its semblance 
 to a place of residence for human beings ; he sees 
 the scattered reminders of war, the stranded ships 
 in the harbor, the ruins of the Russian fleet, sunk 
 to bar the waterway for the enemies' vessels, 
 
 73 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 soldiers marching to their new post to relieve some 
 worn-out, decimated regiment, or, saddest sight of 
 all, a Tartar's cart loaded heavily with the bodies 
 of the slain, carried to their last resting-place 
 without honor or ceremony. From afar, like the 
 roll of thunder, comes the noise of belching guns, 
 and he cannot help a momentary feeling of pride 
 that he, too, is in Sebastopol. The war which he 
 was now to experience was to change somewhat 
 his view of the Russian officers, for here they were 
 not adventurers, as in the Caucasus, but defenders 
 of the Fatherland, and he sees the same feeling 
 of earnestness and devotion in the driver of the 
 cart, the common soldier, and the white-gloved 
 officer. Upon the streets there is nothing to 
 prove the necessity for extraordinary valor, but he 
 leads us immediately into the hospital, a former 
 clubhouse ; he opens the door, and we shrink from 
 entering, for we are driven back by the spectacle 
 which presents itself and by the odors which 
 penetrate our nostrils. " But go on," he says ; 
 " unfortunate people like to see a face which pities 
 them ; " and he leads us bravely from bed to bed 
 while hesitatingly he enters into conversation 
 with one and another of the patients. " Where are 
 
 74 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 you hurt?" "In the leg," is the answer, and we 
 notice that the leg is gone. Simply the soldier tells 
 the story of his wounding, but omits the fact that 
 after he was shot he refused to leave the ranks 
 until he saw whether the guns which he had 
 helped to load did some damage to the enemy ; 
 and that in spite of his lost leg he is eager to go 
 back to teach the young soldiers how to shoot. 
 Farther and farther we go, until we reach the oper- 
 ating-room and come face to face with the real 
 tragedies of war, after which he stops, and says : 
 "You will witness terrible and heart-rending 
 scenes, you will see war, not in its scientific, 
 beautiful, and glittering order, with bugle-call 
 and drum-beat, with waving flags and generals on 
 prancing horses, but war in its reality, in blood, 
 in suffering, in death." 
 
 From the hospital the reader is led to the fourth 
 bastion, and there sees the brave defenders of 
 Sebastopol at work, dodging the bombs and bul- 
 lets which come thick as hail and which strike 
 and destroy the defenses and the defenders. Tol- 
 stoy stood at this most dangerous post for many 
 months, every moment on the brink of eternity. 
 What he saw and what he felt here was nearly 
 
 75 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 always the human, and seldom the historic ; the 
 canvases he paints are small, and he stints the 
 color ; for he knows that only the superficial ob- 
 server can see anything beautiful in war. Yet he, 
 too, sees something of beauty, not in march or 
 countermarch, in cloud of smoke or flying bombs, 
 but in the courage of the men, the bravery with 
 which they do their duty, the fearlessness with 
 which they meet death. He was very much re- 
 spected and loved by the soldiers, for he was a 
 faithful officer, a good comrade ; and in spite of 
 the prevailing sadness could bring a trace of joy 
 to the camp-fire. A captain who served with him 
 thus describes him : " With his stories and his 
 extemporized verses the Count cheered us all and 
 made us forget the hardships of war. He was in 
 the fullest sense of the word, the soul of the 
 whole battery. When he was in our midst we did 
 not realize how quickly the time passed ; when 
 he was absent, all the comrades felt blue ; when 
 he returned, he came like the prodigal son and 
 confessed everything : how much he had lost at 
 cards, how much he had drunk, and where and 
 how he had spent his days and nights. His con- 
 science troubled him and he acted as if he had 
 
 76 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 committed the greatest crimes ; so that one had 
 to pity the poor fellow. As a man he was, in one 
 word, a queer fellow ; and I must confess it, I did 
 not understand him ; nevertheless, he was a splen- 
 did comrade, an honest soul, and he had a golden 
 heart. Whoever came really near to him had to 
 like and could not forget him." Indeed he was 
 a "good comrade," for it was he who startled 
 Russia by the story of its common soldiers' suffer- 
 ing and of their uncommon bravery. Not in bas- 
 tions, mines, and guns he discovers Russia's 
 strength, but in the spirit of its defenders. 
 "They cannot do this," he says, "because of 
 their love of a decoration, or because of fame, or 
 because they are driven to it they suffer and 
 die because deep in the heart of every Russian 
 there is a great passion, a love for the Father- 
 land." 
 
 In Russia this story created a great sensation ; 
 the empress wept over it, and the czar, Nicholas 
 I., gave order to have this young man kept in 
 view, and to remove him from his dangerous 
 post in the Fourth Battery. Tolstoy's heart and 
 mind were busy, for in the tumult of war he not 
 only wrote the first sketch, "Sebastopol in May," 
 
 77 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 but he also continued to work upon his Cauca- 
 sus material. After a blundering attack upon 
 the enemy, in which the Russians were driven 
 back with severe losses, a song was heard at the 
 camp-fires ; a song in which in a caustic and hu- 
 morous way Tolstoy described the encounter. The 
 verse has no poetic merit : it is a mere jingle, 
 and not really a good one, but I have translated 
 it because it is his only effort in that direction 
 with the exception of a few verses to his friend 
 Fjett, which are of the same quality. 
 
 How we, on the 4th of something, 
 Carried by the Devil's prompting, 
 Went to rob the mountain. 
 
 Baron Wrevsky, 1 full of drink, 
 Tried to make Gorcakof 2 think 
 He must do his bidding. 
 
 " Prince ! oh, follow my advice, 
 If you think about it twice, 
 I will make report." 
 
 Then the whole staff came together, 
 With trailing sword and shining leather 
 And Major N. Bekok. 
 
 1 General. 
 
 2 Commander of Sebastopol. 
 
 78 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 And the wise and brave Bekok 
 Sat there like a stupid block ; 
 Could not give an answer. 
 
 Long they talked and gave ad vice , 
 Topographs then drew plans nice, 
 On a sheet of paper. 
 
 Very smooth and very fine 
 Looked on paper every line, 
 Ravines they had forgotten. 
 
 Princes, Counts, to see the sport, 
 Rode as far as the big fort, 
 With the topographs. 
 
 " Hey, Liprandi, 1 storm the height ! " 
 He said, " Thank you " (in great fright), 
 " I would rather not. 
 
 " With sense we cannot do this thing, 
 Read 2 alone can vict'ry bring, 
 Let me see him do it." 
 
 Read with courage goes along, 
 Soldiers follow with a song : 
 " Hurrah ! to the bridge." 
 
 Martinau is vainly pleading, 
 " Wait for cavalry's relieving ; " 
 " No, go storm the heights." 
 
 1 General. 
 
 2 General Read. 
 
 79 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 On they go with song and cheer, 
 But the horsemen are not here, / 
 Some one made a blunder. 
 
 Regiments went up the height ; 
 Driven back in sorry plight, 
 Companies returned. 
 
 Bravely there we held our place, 
 But of succor not a trace, 
 Though we gave the signal. 
 
 With holy zeal the general prayed, 
 In safe and sacred spot he stayed 
 Before the Virgin Mother. 
 
 Beaten worse than we can tell, 
 Him who led us hither. 
 
 If the author's name had been mentioned, these 
 verses would have cut short Tolstoy's military 
 career, although he was not their originator. 
 After the unsuccessful attack, the officers sat 
 around the watch-fire talking it over, when some 
 one suggested that each in turn compose a verse 
 about the affair, which was so tragic and yet so 
 ridiculous. The idea was taken up and created 
 no end of fun, but the poem did not materialize. 
 
 80 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 The next day Tolstoy brought these verses, which 
 were received with applause and soon were on 
 every one's lips, making the lives of the gen- 
 erals mentioned in them far from comfortable. 
 The verses are nowhere mentioned in Tolstoy's 
 works, and to-day he laughs when they are spoken 
 of, remembering them only as one of his boyish 
 pranks, for which there was little opportunity 
 during those months in which he was daily the 
 companion of men "who were about to die." 
 " Six months," he writes in his " Sebastopol in 
 May," "have passed since the first bullet whistled 
 across and demolished the earthworks thrown 
 up by the enemy ; since that time thousands of 
 bombs, cannon-balls, and bullets have flown from 
 the fort to the earthworks, and from the earth- 
 works to the fort ; the death angel has hovered 
 over them unceasingly, . . . and the question 
 which statesmen could not answer has not yet 
 found its solution through powder and shot." 
 
 Still the band plays on the boulevard as in time 
 of peace, while officers, gayly dressed women and 
 children walk about with a holiday air. Tolstoy 
 makes us acquainted with Captain Michailof, 
 who goes for the thirteenth time to the battery, 
 
 81 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 is depressed by the unlucky number, and full 
 of apprehension. He has gone voluntarily to 
 this dangerous post, and in him struggle bravery 
 and fear, humility and pride, the desire to live 
 and the horror of death. We follow, too, an- 
 other officer, Kalugin, who seeks honor, glory, and 
 shelter. Unsurpassed in deep and quiet tragedy 
 is the death of Praskuchin, an officer who fol- 
 lows Michailof to the most dangerous place on 
 the battery, and there is struck by an exploding 
 bomb. " The second which passed between the 
 lighting of the bomb and its explosion seemed 
 an hour, and sharp, short, and conflicting are 
 the thoughts which pass through his mind." 
 " Perhaps it will not explode at all," he says to 
 himself, when through his shut eyelids there 
 penetrates a red flame, and with a dreadful crash 
 something heavy strikes his breast. " Thank God, 
 I am only wounded," was his first thought, and 
 he wanted to feel his breast, but his hands seemed 
 to be chained, and a peculiar weight pressed his 
 head. He counts, "one, two, three soldiers, and 
 there is an officer with his mantle thrown back. 
 Lightning flames in his eyes, and he wonders 
 with what they are shooting, mortars or guns. 
 
 82 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 It must be guns. Again they are shooting, and 
 again there are soldiers, five, six, seven, and 
 they all pass by. Suddenly the fear rose in him 
 that they might crush him. He wished to call 
 out that he was wounded, but his mouth was so 
 dry that his tongue clove to his gums, and a 
 dreadful thirst tortured him. He felt his breast 
 wet ; it reminded him of water, and he would 
 have liked to drink that from which came the 
 sensation. He summoned all his strength and 
 tried to call out : ' Lift me up ; ' but instead of 
 that he only groaned, which was terrible for 
 him to hear. Then little red flames danced be- 
 fore his eyes, and he felt as if soldiers laid 
 stones upon him, and they took his breath more 
 and more ; he attempted to push the stones away, 
 he stretched himself, and already he saw no- 
 thing, felt nothing, thought nothing ; a burst 
 shell had struck him in the breast, and he was 
 killed immediately." 
 
 In spite of dreadful torture, and the fear of 
 death in its many forms which Tolstoy saw and 
 described, he was for a moment elated by the 
 prevailing patriotic spirit, and says : " The siege 
 of Sebastopol, in which the Russian nation was 
 
 83 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 such a hero, will leave its trace upon Russia 
 but in the same breath he wonders "whetb 
 war is not a mistake, in which the nations a: 
 entangled without cause." The people do n 
 hate each other ; watch them during that tin 
 when the " white flag of truce waves over tl 
 blossoming valley which is covered by corpses 
 Many thousands of people push against one a: 
 other there ; smilingly they talk to each othe: 
 two men who meet converse together in a mo 
 peaceful way : " Are you from the staif ? " " Nc 
 I am from the Sixth Infantry." "Where d: 
 you buy this?" "AtBalaklava." "It is pretty 
 says the one officer. " If you will take it as 
 memento of our meeting, you are welcome to it ; 
 and the polite Frenchman hands the cigarett 
 case to the receptive Russian, who in turn giv< 
 him his own. They are pleased by this episod 
 and all who see it smile. Thus the officers ta 
 one to the other, and the common soldiers me< 
 their comrades with still less ceremony. " Tabs 
 bung," says the soldier with the red shirt ; ar 
 the bystanders laugh. "Oui; bun tabak Tui 
 and Russ tabak bun?" answers the Frenchma: 
 " Russ bun," says the soldier with the red shirl 
 
 84 
 
UNIVERSITY 
 
 or 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 and all around them laugh so heartily that they 
 nearly roll on the ground. "France not bun, 
 bunshur, mussyo," continues the soldier, exhaust- 
 ing his stock of the foreign tongue, and good- 
 naturedly hitting the Frenchman in the stomach. 
 Thus they continue to laugh together, men who 
 poured gunshot at one another an hour ago, and 
 who will do the same thing again as soon as the 
 signal is given. They chat and laugh, indiffer- 
 ent to the tremendous carnage which they have 
 strewn about them, and unconscious of the great 
 wrong perpetrated by them and against them. 
 
 Here Tolstoy strikes the first strong note of 
 that terrible indictment against war, which was to 
 make of him the most famous peace apostle of our 
 times. "And these Christians," he says, "who 
 confess the same Christian law of love and self- 
 sacrifice, do not fall repentingly upon their knees 
 at the sight of what they have done. The white 
 flags are drawn in, anew the instruments of 
 death and suffering whistle their horrible tune, 
 and one hears sighs and curses." Again he leads 
 us to "Sebastopol in May," and still more fearful 
 are the pictures unrolled. The Russians are ex- 
 hausted but not discouraged, and we meet the 
 
 85 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 same soldier, brave and obedient, who has in him 
 more virtues than the officers know or care to know, 
 and who goes to his death uncomplainingly. We 
 follow two brothers, one of them fresh from St. 
 Petersburg, where he " was ashamed to remain 
 when others die for the Fatherland." He finds his 
 company on the Malachof heights, and his brother 
 takes leave of him for the last time. That day ends 
 the siege, and brings SebastopoPs doom. The older 
 brother receives his death wound, and as the chap- 
 lain hands him the cross, he asks : " Have we beaten 
 the French ?" and the man of comfort, who does 
 not wish to pain the dying man, answers : " The 
 victory is ours." At the last moment the soldier 
 thinks of his younger brother, wishing him to share 
 his fate, and his desire is fulfilled ; for the young 
 boy's flesh is crushed underneath the feet of the 
 advancing French. 
 
 Sebastopol is to be evacuated, the remaining 
 forts are blown up, and slowly the columns move 
 into the impenetrable darkness. The soldiers leave 
 the place with mingled feelings of shame, regret, 
 and gratitude that their lives were spared ; but 
 as each man passes over the bridge which leads 
 to safety, he crosses^himself and then shakes his 
 
 86 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 fist at the victorious foe. Tolstoy also left the 
 battlefield, and after acting for a time as an im- 
 perial courier, he took his leave of the army, hav- 
 ing seen three years of arduous service. It was 
 the most important period of his life ; it brought 
 latent thoughts to maturity, it increased his love 
 for the common man, and his horror of war. It 
 gave him a chance to see humanity at its best and 
 at its worst ; he had helped many a man to die, 
 and that gave him an increased desire to live. He 
 seemed to have had a glimpse of the most secret 
 recesses of men's hearts, and in learning to know 
 others, he learned to know himself. He had not 
 as yet a philosophy of life, but he was feeling 
 after it. In the chaos of war he came near the 
 true source of peace ; laurels, too, he gained, 
 upon a field on which the sword had been sup- 
 planted by the pen, which henceforth was to be 
 his only weapon. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 IN ST. PETERSBURG 
 
 RUSSIA was in the stage of fermentation. The 
 unfortunate policy of Nicholas had brought untold 
 ruin upon all classes, which sullenly expressed 
 their discontent, while demanding and expecting 
 relief. Thirty-three million people, the bone and 
 sinew of Russia, its patient, toiling peasants, were 
 the property of the aristocrats, who with their in- 
 creased burdens, pressed more heavily upon the 
 already crushed mujik. During the disastrous 
 Crimean war the peasants had been called from 
 their far-off villages to be drilled and made ready 
 for the defense of their country ; their drill-mas- 
 ters were pensioned officers, students, artists, 
 and officials; all of them discontented. Their 
 -spirit quickly communicated itself to the pea- 
 santry, which for the first time heard a complaint 
 that harmonized with its own repressed feelings. 
 Alexander II., whose humane policy will always 
 remain like the touch of a sunburst upon a storm- 
 
 88 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 laden sky, permitted in the public press the dis- 
 cussion of existing wrongs in order to pacify the 
 discontented, as well as to get a perspective for 
 his own plan of action. In the capital on the Neva 
 had gathered Russia's struggling authors, who had 
 been caught in the prevailing upward pressure, and 
 were ready to write the wrongs of the people 
 and to dream about the unknown and better things 
 before them. A journal founded by Puschkin, and 
 now edited by Panaieff and Nekrassoff , gave them 
 the battlefield on which they bravely struggled 
 against Eastern conservatism, and where they 
 broke many a lance for Western culture. To us, 
 the names of Turgenieff and Dostoyefsky, who 
 were the leaders of the movement, are warrants 
 of its literary standard ; and that Tolstoy was 
 immediately received into this circle as an equal 
 shows to what heights he had risen while alter- 
 nately wielding the sword and the pen. He came 
 to St. Petersburg from the deprivations of a be- 
 sieged city, and drew in with deep breath all that it 
 could yield him. He soon made the acquaintance 
 of Turgenieff, who was then at the height of his 
 literary fame and known beyond the boundaries 
 of his own country ; not a trace of jealousy was 
 
 89 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 visible in him, although he saw in Tolstoy a rising 
 literary star, an equal and a brother, whom he 
 received into his home most cordially, although 
 he was not a comfortable guest. He came home 
 whenever he pleased, which was always long after 
 midnight, sleeping until noon, and beyond it; 
 and inasmuch as he occupied the parlor of his 
 host, who believed in " early to bed and early to 
 rise," the latter was not a little incommoded. 
 
 The poet Schenshin, known by the pseudonym 
 "Fjett," and who remained in unbroken friend- 
 ship with Tolstoy, saw him here for the first 
 time. Tolstoy was still in bed when he arrived, 
 although the morning was far advanced ; and 
 when "Fjett" expressed his surprise, Turge- 
 nieff said : " He does that all the time ; he has 
 come back from Sebastopol and his battery, and 
 he is beside himself. Cards, gypsies, and drink- 
 ing, the whole night, and then he sleeps like a 
 corpse till afternoon. At first I tried to hold 
 him back, but now I have given it up." 
 
 Tolstoy's excessive nature could not be held 
 in check; he sinned every day like the most 
 depraved mujik, but repented as magnificently 
 as King David. All that he had condemned, and 
 
 90 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 was to condemn still more severely, he tasted 
 through and through, and found pleasure in it. 
 His perfectly open nature, which tempted him 
 to tell everybody just what he thought and as 
 he thought it, led him into severe conflicts with 
 his colleagues, and especially with Turgenieff, 
 who was a perfect idealist in his early years 
 and full of mannerisms, which seemed to Tolstoy 
 insincerities. Theirs were two opposite natures, 
 both of them too strong and individualistic to 
 cling to each other. They were constantly quar- 
 reling like two spoiled boys, agreeing best 
 when Turgenieff was in Paris, and Tolstoy in 
 Moscow or Yasnaya Polyana. How trivial these 
 quarrels were, their common friend " Fjett " re- 
 ports after witnessing the following in Nekras- 
 soff's home, where both of them were visitors. 
 " Turgenieff walked up and down the room with 
 gigantic steps, piteously groaning, holding his 
 t throat with both hands, and whispering with the 
 eyes of a dying gazelle : * I am done for, I have 
 bronchitis/ Tolstoy, like an angry bear, said 
 roughly, ' Bronchitis is a disease of the imagi- 
 nation/ NekrassofFs heart sank into his boots, 
 for he is the editor of the ' Journal,' of which 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 these two are the main pillars, and he is eager 
 to avoid a rupture ; he would like to take Tur- 
 genieff 's part, but fears to offend Tolstoy, who 
 is lying, angry, on the sofa. Turgenieff, with 
 his hands in his pockets and his coat-tails swing- 
 ing, walks up and down the three rooms. Every- 
 body is excited and nobody knows what to do. 
 Expecting a catastrophe, I step to the sofa and 
 say : ' My dearest Tolstoy, don't be excited. You 
 do not know how he values you and how he 
 loves you.' ' I cannot permit him/ replies Tol- 
 stoy, with expanded nostrils, ' to do anything to 
 spite me ; now he walks purposely up and down 
 in front of me, and turns his democratic shin- 
 bones hither and thither.' ' 
 
 Their whole early acquaintance is spoiled by 
 such trivialities, which are unfortunately con- 
 nected with the lives of great people, and which 
 spring sometimes from their overwrought nerves, 
 but more often from the fact that many an 
 unripened genius thinks incivility the sign of 
 budding strength and greatness. A year after 
 this quarrel, Turgenieff writes Tolstoy from Paris, 
 " Our acquaintance was formed under wrong con- 
 ditions; when we meet again it will be easier 
 
 92 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 and better." But afterwards he writes: "A 
 strong friendship between us is impossible, for 
 we are formed of different clay." 
 
 Tolstoy's self -appreciation, heightened by the 
 self-conscious atmosphere which prevailed in his 
 literary circle, and by the praise which was show- 
 ered upon him, destroyed all his reserve, and 
 made him the storm-center of every company. 
 He was used to dealing roughly and honestly 
 with himself, and he thought that he could do 
 it with others. At one of these gatherings he 
 called out excitedly, " I cannot admit that your 
 words express your convictions. I stand here 
 with my sword or dagger, and I say : ' So long 
 as I live, nobody shall pass this threshold ; ' that 
 is conviction, but you try to hide from one an- 
 other your real thoughts, and you call that con- 
 viction." Turgenieff, for whom this sally was 
 intended, cried out angrily, " Get out ! your ban- 
 ner does not wave here." The trouble was that 
 most of the men who composed this circle were 
 dreamers who had ideals, but could not coin them 
 into words, and much less into deeds, while Tol- 
 stoy was as eager for action then as he was on 
 the Fourth Battery face to face with the enemy. 
 
 93 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 He had in him that elementary force which 
 brooks no opposition, which has no sense of the 
 common and the commonplace, and no use for 
 them ; which disregards all traditions, breaks 
 abruptly from the past, and takes hold of the pre- 
 sent as if it were the first day of creation. Out of 
 such a mood came his unfortunate criticisms of 
 Shakespeare and his admirers, of Goethe and his 
 Faust, and of Herzen the Russian author, whose 
 name was then upon everybody's lips. Among 
 men of lesser strength his words carried convic- 
 tion, while among his equals and friends they 
 created discords and quarrels, and broke binding 
 ties, consequences which he did not care to avoid, 
 at the expense of what he considered " truth." He 
 also believed that one must have a definite phi- 
 losophy of life, and that one must aim for moral 
 perfection in himself and others, theories which 
 were not considered necessary by his friends, 
 among whom art was a great goddess, and "art 
 for art's sake " a formula not yet expressed but 
 felt, and one which Tolstoy was always ready to 
 combat. What contributed not a little to his 
 irritability was that he fancied himself ill, for 
 consumption was in his family, his best beloved 
 
 94 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 brother being then in its first stages. But more 
 perhaps than anything else his disquiet grew 
 from the fact that he did not live up to his 
 ideals. Each day with him was a struggle for 
 moral perfection, and each day saw his defeat. 
 Such physical, mental, and spiritual unrest does 
 not make a man a good companion, although in 
 spite of it, the artist continued to grow, and per- 
 haps because of it, his creative power became 
 stronger and stronger. 
 
 He wrote during this time another frag- 
 ment of the never-completed biographical story, 
 "Youth," "The Notebook of a Scorekeeper," 
 " The Two Hussars," " The Blizzard," and " Al- 
 bert." " The Notebook of a Scorekeeper " is one of 
 the keenest criticisms which he has written, of 
 the life around him : aside from its artistic merit, 
 it ought to be of the greatest importance as a 
 tract against the passion of gambling. Just as 
 mercilessly as he had pictured war, with its use- 
 less and terrible sacrifice of life, he now de- 
 scribes the struggle with that passion which has 
 ruined such large fortunes, so much character, 
 and so many lives. Delicately yet fearlessly and 
 plainly he describes NechludofF s first step to- 
 
 95 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 ward moral ruin ; and although it all happened 
 in St. Petersburg, we recognize in his surround- 
 ings the " men of the world " who are every- 
 where the same, eager to lead others astray, and 
 doing it without the slightest twinge of con- 
 science. On the contrary, they are proud of the 
 fact that they have guided an innocent youth to 
 the path which they call the way of life, but 
 which is the way of death. "You may laugh 
 about it," says Nechludoff blushingly, " Prince, I 
 shall never forgive you or myself." " Don't cry," 
 says the prince jokingly, " we shall ride home." 
 "I don't want to ride anywhere. Oh ! what have 
 I done?" Thus he sighed, yet did not move 
 away from the billiard-table. "He had been as 
 innocent as a young girl." This same circle which 
 had prided itself upon destroying his innocence 
 also enticed him to ruin his fortune. Pitiable are 
 those steps downward, and we follow him trem- 
 blingly. He has gambled away all he had ; he is 
 possessed by the demon ; he borrows money, the 
 money of the poor scorekeeper; he is wanted 
 less and less as his fortune is reduced, and finally 
 the keeper of the house refuses openly to trust 
 him longer. Weighed down by the shame, struck 
 
 96 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 in the vital part of his sensitive soul, he sends the 
 scorekeeper out of the room and kills himself. 
 
 That this was written out of Tolstoy's own 
 experience we know, and that he was near com- 
 mitting suicide is admitted by him ; that he was 
 chastising himself and trying to cure himself of 
 the evil which possessed him are plainly seen. 
 The story is not less tragic and awful than any 
 of his war stories, and the color is as gray and 
 dark as that which hung over Sebastopol. He 
 takes all the romance out of the social vices, just 
 as he blurred all the bright colors in our concep- 
 tion of war. 
 
 With less artistic skill but not less forcibly, he 
 wrote the story of " The Two Hussars," in which 
 he puts opposite each other father and son ; one 
 of them a man of the old school, who loves "wine, 
 women, and song," an unscrupulous Don Juan, 
 and his son, who conies to the scene of his father's 
 adventures, with high ideals of life, with an ab- 
 horrence of war, and great love for the simple 
 domestic life. These are the two points upon 
 which Tolstoy is to enlarge more and more in 
 his work and in his life, and which here serve 
 only as preliminary sketches. 
 
 97 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 In his simple but powerful story " The Bliz- 
 zard," it is as if an artist had unexpectedly 
 turned from the painting of figures to that of 
 landscapes, for Tolstoy suddenly becomes descrip- 
 tive, and silences all his critics who still claim 
 that he has no feeling for nature. He tells of 
 his journey from one post-station to another, on 
 a stormy winter's night ; of the increasing dark- 
 ness, the howling wind, the driving snow, the 
 long wandering through the trackless night, and 
 the impressions made upon him by the illimit- 
 able space. Clearly, as if painted upon canvas 
 by the best artist, the picture remains before 
 our eyes, and we wander with him like that lost 
 speck which he was, upon the snowy desert. 
 This feeling for nature is one of Tolstoy's artis- 
 tic qualities which he purposely suppressed, and 
 only once more does it appear in all its fullness : 
 that is in the forty-third chapter of "War and 
 Peace," which Turgenieff called " the finest de- 
 scriptive scene in European literature." Nearing 
 the form of a novel, and yet with scarcely any 
 plot, is the next story, "Albert," which Tolstoy 
 began at this time, and finished during his stay 
 abroad. The hero of the story is a German mu- 
 
 98 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 sician, the one whom Tolstoy dragged with him 
 to Yasnaya Polyana, and whom he tried to save 
 for himself and his art. To Tolstoy he is that not 
 very uncommon type of the musician, who has 
 great talent but not much character. In him the 
 vital fiber remained undeveloped, and in educating 
 the artist, the man was lost. Without and within 
 he is neglected, bow-legged, a narrow, bent 
 back, long disheveled hair, his thin white neck 
 encircled by a cravat which looks like a rope, 
 while from his sleeves the dirty shirt protrudes 
 itself. Delesoff (Tolstoy) found him in a dubious 
 locality, where he delighted the mixed company 
 by his magnificent playing. Delesoff is attracted 
 to him, takes him home, and is anxious to build 
 up in him his destroyed manhood ; but his benevo- 
 lence is a torture to the musician, to whom the 
 well-ordered life and the comfort of the home 
 seem a penalty rather than a benefaction. He 
 is detained by force for three days, but finally 
 escapes his rescuer, and is found frozen to death 
 at the entrance to the ball-room. In reality, 
 the musician remained longer with Tolstoy, and 
 helped to develop his musical talent, which is not 
 inconsiderable. It is in this story that Tolstoy 
 
 99 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 first hints at his condemnation of art, which 
 often makes itself both one's creator and de- 
 stroyer. 
 
 " The Cossacks/' mentioned in a previous chap- 
 ter, is one of five stories written during this 
 period by Tolstoy, which increased his fame, and 
 caused the gentle and forgiving Turgenieff to 
 write from Paris: "When this wine is clarified 
 it will be a drink worthy of the gods ; " and to 
 Tolstoy he wrote at the same time : " If you do 
 not swerve from your purpose (and there is no 
 reason that you should) you will do great things." 
 Yet his literary reputation satisfied him as little 
 as his military laurels, and his desire to come in 
 touch with the forward movement of the world 
 led him in 1857 to Europe, and directly to Paris, 
 the Mecca of Russian intelligence. 
 
 100 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 TOLSTOY'S FIRST VISIT ABROAD 
 
 As far as the Neva is from the Seine, so far does 
 the spirit of the Slav seem from that of the 
 Latin. Heavy, sedate, impassive, he presents a 
 complete contrast to the lithe, passionate, and 
 graceful Frenchman, to whom nevertheless he 
 feels himself drawn, and with whom he is closely 
 allied whether their respective countries are at 
 peace or not. It may be that Paris grew to be 
 the Mecca of the Russians only in that sense in 
 which it has been that of the whole intellectual 
 and pleasure-loving world ; or the Russians may 
 have been drawn there by finding in it the very 
 things which their own nation and country 
 lacked, or what seems more likely still, they were 
 attracted to each other by a real kinship of 
 spirit which does not appear to the superficial 
 observer. The Germany which lies between 
 these two countries, with its deep intellectual- 
 ity, its love of law and order, its correctness and 
 
 101 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 its brusqueness, never had a great attraction for 
 the Russian, who usually passed through it with- 
 out noticing it, and without knowing or caring 
 to know it. Tolstoy also passed through it quickly, 
 and yet his sharp, discerning eyes noticed, as soon 
 as he crossed the Russian border, that he was in 
 a country full of " courage and vigor ; " that each 
 patch of soil showed cultivation, and that it 
 was a land worth knowing better. He promised 
 himself a prolonged visit on his return trip, and 
 hurried on to Paris, where he arrived early in 
 February, 1857. 
 
 In Tolstoy's notebook nothing is found which 
 shows what effect Paris had upon him, and he 
 seldom speaks of his experiences abroad, nor 
 is the influence visible in any of his works. He 
 saw in Paris the same human beings whom he 
 had seen in St. Petersburg, with the same sor- 
 rows and cares, the same passions and desires ; 
 and although he found more culture, he did not 
 find more virtue. If the architecture of its 
 churches and palaces was different, and customs 
 and habits unlike those at home, love and hate, 
 happiness and misery, were the same. Above 
 all, he found that the spirit which permeated 
 
 1 02 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 French society was identical with that in Russia, 
 having the same faults and the same virtues. 
 The happy-go-lucky, easy-going, pleasure-loving 
 crowd which surged up and down the Nevsky 
 Prospect, he saw also on the Parisian boulevards. 
 In Paris, to be sure, the crowd flaunted its luxu- 
 ries more gracefully, and it drank absinthe in- 
 stead of vodka ; but it came on the scene at just 
 about the same hour, and turned night into day in 
 just about the same way. It was the same chess- 
 board, only on one side there were more pawns 
 and on the other side more kings, while on both 
 sides the game of life was played carelessly ; but 
 when one lost it said " nytshevo," and the other 
 perhaps sought the quickest way to the morgue. 
 Tolstoy was not caught in the Parisian whirl, and, 
 if he indulged in any of its pleasures, he did not 
 grow so dizzy that he could not still see the only 
 thing to him worth seeing, the individual 
 human being. He attended the lectures in the 
 Sorbonne, rode in an omnibus up and down the 
 boulevards, walked through the narrow streets 
 where the toilers lived, went to the prisons, and 
 attended the execution of a criminal. This single 
 death made more impression upon him than the 
 
 103 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 life of the gay crowd upon the streets, and his 
 whole nature revolted against so cruel and inex- 
 cusable an act. He still hears how the head rolled 
 into the wooden casket, and how the headless 
 body followed it ; still sees the flowing blood, the 
 inquisitive throng, and all the gruesome sur- 
 roundings of this scene, which made him rebel 
 against a civilization which not only allowed but 
 took satisfaction in it. 
 
 In Paris he again met Turgenieff (who had 
 grown fond of France and could scarcely exist 
 in his own country), Nekrassoff, who was also 
 visiting there, and many other lesser lights who 
 had come for inspiration. They found Tolstoy 
 a better companion than he had been in St. Pe- 
 tersburg, which was probably due to the fact that 
 he was living a more regular life, and that he 
 indulged in no excesses ; consequently his nerves 
 were steadier, and he talked less and worked 
 more. During his stay in Paris he lived in one 
 of those international pensions in which it 
 abounds, and of which he says : " There were 
 twenty of us of different nationalities, callings, 
 and characteristics ; but under the influence of 
 French sociability we gathered around the table 
 
 104 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 as if we were a pleasure party. From one end 
 to the other the jests and jokes were passed, 
 often in mutilated languages. Everybody talked, 
 without a care as to how his words would be 
 received : we had our philosopher, our fighting 
 rooster, our poet, our fool, and they belonged to 
 all of us. After the meal we pushed the table 
 aside and danced on the dusty carpet, in time and 
 tune or out of them, until late in the evening. 
 Perhaps we flirted a little bit : we were not 
 always very sensible or reverent people, never- 
 theless we were human beings. There were the 
 Spanish countess with her romantic adventures, 
 the American doctor who had access to the Tui- 
 leries, the young tragedian with his long hair, 
 the pianist who herself said that she had com- 
 posed the finest polka in the world, and the un- 
 fortunate, beautiful widow with her three rings 
 on each finger. We associated one with the other 
 in a somewhat superficial but altogether delight- 
 ful fashion, and took away with us passing or 
 deeper memories of one another." 
 
 In April and May of the same year, Tolstoy 
 was in Italy ; but, strange to say, he seemed to be 
 unimpressed by it. The ecstasies with which 
 
 105 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 every one speaks of its blue skies and match- 
 less seas found in him no echo ; and he passed 
 through the Eternal City, through Florence and 
 Venice, as if he had been both deaf and blind. 
 Only in conversation with friends who have trav- 
 eled does he here and there drop a few words ; 
 but they add nothing to our knowledge of his 
 impressions, for they are often only trivial anec- 
 dotes and nothing more. In reality, he walked 
 through Italy like an iconoclastic Puritan ; so full 
 of thoughts of man's sins and man's sufferings 
 that hardly a ray of its matchless beauty pene- 
 trated those sharp, half -closed eyes, shaded by a 
 knitted brow. In Italy too many beggars hung 
 at his heels for him to take any pleasure in vis- 
 iting palaces ; he saw too much ignorance and 
 superstition to believe in the elevating influences 
 of that art by which its museums and galleries 
 were crowded ; and, above all, Italy spoke only of 
 the past, and in that Tolstoy had little interest. 
 He was never a hero-worshiper, did not care for 
 tombs or monuments, and his guides found him 
 a skeptical, an irreverent, and unwilling victim. 
 Although he had not then formulated a theory 
 of art, he had given the subject much thought ; 
 
 1 06 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 and the classic nudeness was to him not the less 
 nude simply because it was classic. And just be- 
 cause he had a strong and sensuous nature he 
 felt keenly its influence and often knew himself 
 too debased to express himself exaltedly. 
 
 In Switzerland, where nature was not spoiled 
 by the artifices of men, his artistic soul was 
 touched ; and he quivers from emotion at the 
 sight of it. He writes in his "Luzerne" : "As I 
 went up to my room and opened my window 
 toward the lake, I was literally dazed and over- 
 whelmed in the first moments by the beauty of 
 the water, the mountains, and the sky. I felt 
 an unrest, a desire in some way to give expres- 
 sion to the overflowing emotions which were 
 suddenly filling my soul. . . . But neither on 
 the lake, on the mountains, nor in the sky was 
 there one straight line visible, or one definite 
 color, or yet one quiet point ; everywhere there 
 were motion, irregularity, arbitrariness, endless 
 variety of light and shade, but also in every- 
 thing the quiet, the softness, the harmony, the 
 necessity of the beautiful." At the sight of what 
 man had done, he felt here just what Ruskin 
 felt ; nor does he condemn less severely and sarcas- 
 
 107 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 tically. "And here, in the midst of this indefi- 
 nite, confused, and wild beauty, there stared at 
 me from under my windows, stupid and foolish, 
 the white line of the boulevard, the linden-trees 
 with their supports, the green benches, poor 
 miserable works of human hands, which did not 
 disappear in the surrounding loveliness, like the 
 distant villas and ruins, but which coarsely op- 
 posed it." 
 
 He was able, however, to find a spot where he 
 did not see the straight English tourist among 
 the straight linden-trees, on that horribly straight 
 boulevard, and where he indulged " in that in- 
 complete but therefore sweeter pleasure which 
 one feels when one beholds the beauty of nature 
 all alone." He does not revel very long in this 
 solitary ecstasy, for he comes in touch with a 
 poor dwarfed musician who plays on his guitar 
 and sings the songs of the mountains, before a 
 hundred admiring guests of the hotel, and after- 
 wards is sent away without the smallest reward 
 for his work. Tolstoy pityingly follows the 
 man, talks to him, and returns with him to the 
 elegant hotel in which he played. He takes him 
 to the dining-salon, and is refused admittance 
 
 108 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 because of his companion; but in spite of opposi- 
 tion he enters with him, and a well-fed, well- 
 dressed Englishman immediately leaves his table 
 and complains because of the intrusion. 
 
 This simple incident left a powerful impression 
 on Tolstoy and furnishes the text for his first 
 attack upon society, " Luzerne." It is severe and 
 sarcastic, yet so artistically done and so deeply 
 felt that it escapes classification among his socio- 
 logical tracts. "That is the strange fate of 
 poetry," he says, walking restlessly under those 
 straight linden-trees ; " everybody loves it and 
 desires it, but nobody acknowledges its power. 
 Ask all the guests of the ' Schweitzerhof ' what 
 is the highest gift of Earth, and all, or ninety- 
 nine out of one hundred, will answer : ' The best 
 gift of Earth is money/ And yet they have all 
 left their comfortable homes in the far corners 
 of the world, for ... the poetry which they find 
 in these mountains ; that same poetry of which 
 they talk sarcastically and which they admit is 
 good for children and young girls." He can- 
 not cut himself loose from the thought that no 
 man gave anything to the musician, to whom 
 they all listened, and in whose music they found 
 
 109 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 pleasure. Emphatically and angrily he writes : 
 " On the seventh of July, 1857, in Luzerne, at 
 the hotel Schweitzerhof, in which the richest 
 tourists live, a poor wandering musician played 
 on his guitar and sang for half an hour. About 
 a hundred people listened to him ; but although 
 the singer asked them three times for a gift, 
 not one of them gave him the smallest sum, 
 and most of them laughed at him." 
 
 To Tolstoy this is important enough to be 
 written by the chronicler with a fiery pen on the 
 page of history ; it is more important and of 
 deeper significance than the things we read of in 
 our newspapers and histories. 
 
 "That the English have killed thousands of 
 Chinese because they do not buy for cash, that 
 the French have again killed a thousand natives 
 in Africa simply because the grain grows abun- 
 dantly and because an uninterrupted war is 
 good for the development of the army, that the 
 Turkish consul in Naples must not be a Jew, 
 that the Emperor Napoleon is taking a walk in 
 Plombieres and has assured his people in black 
 and white that he ascends the throne only to 
 please them, all these things are empty words 
 
 1 10 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 which express well-known facts or which are 
 only meant to hide their real meaning : but 
 that which happened in Luzerne on the seventh 
 of July, seems to me entirely new and remark- 
 able, and has no bearing upon what we call the 
 bad traits of human nature; it is a definite 
 phase of our social development. That is a fact, 
 not for the history of human actions, but for 
 the history of progress and civilization." 
 
 Hi's righteous indignation at a wrong against 
 one human being seems almost ridiculous ; but it 
 has always been and has remained his habit to see 
 in the one wronged man the wronged human 
 race ; and no less clearly to see in the attitude of 
 the mass the one dominating thought, the whole 
 attitude, of modern civilization. And as there in 
 Luzerne gathered its best results, the incident 
 of the musician proved to him that culture has 
 destroyed in man his simple, natural, and original 
 feeling toward others. He reasoned that in no 
 village in Russia would this have been possible. 
 The mujik is uneducated, but he knows that he 
 is in some way responsible for his brother; 
 he is coarse in conversation, but he has that fine 
 feeling for others which expresses itself in his 
 
 in 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 conduct toward all the unfortunate. He is some- 
 times brutal, but never so brutal that he would 
 turn away a man who had given him pleasure 
 without recompensing him for it. 
 
 Here among cultured people Tolstoy does not 
 find any of these qualities ; consequently he 
 thinks that civilization has destroyed them and 
 that it is in some way to blame. Less pedantic and 
 arbitrary than his accusation and reasoning is 
 his solution of all the problems : - 
 
 " One, only one infallible guide have we : that 
 Spirit which embraces us all, which permeates 
 each individual, and which has put into all of 
 us the desire to seek the good ; the same Spirit 
 which works in the tree that it may grow to- 
 ward the sun, which operates in the flower that 
 it may scatter seed in the autumn, and which 
 dwells in us unconsciously that we may be 
 drawn toward one another." Yet this some- 
 what indefinite solution was not altogether 
 satisfactory ; he felt that it was "vague phrase," 
 and it left him just as undecided as before. He 
 was simply drifting with the current, "like a 
 man sitting in a boat driven by the wind and 
 waves, who might be asked : ' Where are you 
 
 112 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 going ? ' and who could not answer : ' I am going 
 there or there/ ' 
 
 Neither his European visit nor his touch with 
 European scholars brought rest to his ever-ques- 
 tioning soul; and although he was to come to 
 them again and again, and was to " ask and seek 
 and knock" at strange doors, he already felt 
 that the answer was not written in any philoso- 
 phy ; but that it has been worked out in " The 
 One Life," after which he, and every individual, 
 with much sacrifice and labor, must pattern. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 TOLSTOY'S SECOND AND THIRD JOURNEYS ABROAD 
 
 DURING the winter of 1857 Tolstoy was again 
 in Moscow, and in spite of his repeated " preach- 
 ments " against civilization he indulged himself 
 in those aspects of it which are simply refined 
 barbarities, and of which each generation inher- 
 its its full measure. Of those phases of modern 
 progress Russia had its share even before it 
 was civilized ; and the man who said, " Let us eat 
 and drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die," 
 now has numerous descendants in its villages 
 and cities. Temptation has here a peculiar 
 quality ; for the busiest brain soon succumbs to 
 the prevailing spirit of idleness, while the most 
 virtuous man has at least his recurring tempta- 
 tions ; and Tolstoy became a genuine Muscovitic 
 aristocrat before he was aware of it. He sinned 
 under protest, to be sure; but that did not 
 make the champagne less intoxicating, the cards 
 less dangerous to his fortune, or the black-eyed 
 
 114 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 gypsy maidens less ruinous to his morals. This 
 life put him simply on a level with other young 
 men of his time and station ; for at this stage of 
 his development he had only the inclination but 
 not the courage to be odd. 
 
 These rough pleasures, this sowing of his 
 " wild oats," did not close a single door against 
 him, and caused less comment than if he had 
 abstained from them. Nor did he cease taking 
 full delight in higher pleasures ; for he was a 
 constant guest in the home of his friend " Fyett," 
 where an artistic and musical housewife gath- 
 ered around her the intelligence of Moscow, and 
 where many a new symphony and many a new 
 song had their first interpretation, which caused 
 endless debate. Tolstoy not only listened intelli- 
 gently to music, but was a fine performer, being 
 especially sought after to play accompaniments ; 
 for he was a master in that difficult and thank- 
 less art. Sometimes he skipped these musical 
 " jours " ; particularly when he knew that some 
 tedious guests were to be present, or when he 
 suspected his friend "Fyett" of intending to 
 practice on the company his poems or transla- 
 tions of Shakespeare. 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 At this time Tolstoy had, in common with all 
 the idle and noble youth of his acquaintance, a 
 hobby imported from the West ; and that was 
 gymnastics. The inactive young men of Moscow, 
 who found no greater pleasure than to be whirled 
 along, sitting behind fast horses, had suddenly 
 become active, and a large club-house was opened 
 in which they practiced their new accomplish- 
 ment. Tolstoy entered into this latest fashion 
 with all the ardor of his strong physical nature, 
 and every day at noon could be found here 
 " dressed in pink tights, hanging by his toes on 
 the trapeze, his bushy hair over his face." When 
 he had exhausted himself here, he walked up 
 and down the Tverskaya, the loafing-place of 
 Moscow's gilded youth : he was always dressed 
 in the height of fashion, his hat tilted, and a 
 cane twirling between his fingers, the very 
 picture of a dandy. 
 
 Suddenly he disappeared from Moscow, and as 
 suddenly appeared in Paris, from where he went 
 to Dijon and again began to gather his scattered 
 strength to write his sketch, "Albert," the story 
 of the unfortunate musician, to which reference 
 has already been made. 
 
 116 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 By Christmas he is again in Yasnaya Polyana, 
 and ends a rather idle and unprofitable year, 
 only to begin another one in the same way in 
 the same place. In the winter he hunted, and 
 came near losing his life at a bear-chase to which 
 a friend had invited him and " Fyett," who re- 
 lates the incident graphically : " Tolstoy stood 
 nearly up to his waist in the snow, when a pow- 
 erful bear appeared and went straight at him in 
 a decidedly unneighborly fashion. Tolstoy aimed 
 and fired, but failed ; and in the smoke he saw 
 the towering body of the animal ready to throw 
 itself upon him. He shot again ; this time the 
 bullet entered the animal's mouth, but was de- 
 flected by the teeth. Tolstoy did not have time 
 to grasp another gun, nor could he jump out of 
 the way ; he felt a sudden stroke and fell back- 
 ward on the snow ; but the bear's aim was as bad 
 as his own. It sprang too far, and as it re- 
 turned, ready to devour the frightened hunter, 
 he had presence of mind enough to push his 
 big fur cap into its jaws and for the moment 
 avert a renewed attack, until one of the forest- 
 ers could come to his aid and drive away the 
 monster." Tolstoy was found to be badly bitten 
 
 n; 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 and bleeding ; but the first thing he said was, 
 "What will Fyett think about it ? " 
 
 During that year he lived in close intimacy 
 with this poet, whom he called his " little dar- 
 ling," and whom he loved for his gifts as a poet 
 and as a man. This was the year in which Tol- 
 stoy began to be so remarkably interested in 
 farm labor ; and his brother describes how he saw 
 him walking behind the plow just like a pea- 
 sant. Tolstoy himself narrates their conversation 
 about it, in "Anna Karenina," where a great 
 deal of his inner and outer life is portrayed. 
 With marvelous energy he gives himself to the 
 tilling of the soil, yet reserves enough leisure 
 to enjoy all the beauties of the changing sea- 
 sons ; drinking them all in, in strong draughts. 
 " What a marvelous day it has been," he writes 
 of the Pentecostal holyday; "what a beautiful 
 church service ; the fading blossoms of the red- 
 bud, the gray hair of the peasants, their bright 
 red coats, and the glowing, burning sun ! " He 
 testifies to his close touch with nature dur- 
 ing this period, by writing the last part of "The 
 Three Deaths," in which he graphically describes 
 the death of the tree. He did not neglect his 
 
 118 
 

 COUNTESS TOLSTOY 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 gymnastic exercises, but practiced faithfully, to 
 the great amusement of the peasants and the 
 chagrin of his brother Nicolai, who writes : 
 "Lyoftschik (a pet name) wants to do every- 
 thing, and everything at once, and he does 
 not want to give up his gymnastics. Near 
 the window of his workroom is the apparatus. 
 Of course he does as he pleases, and does n't 
 care what others say about it ; but the village 
 elder finds it rather queer, and says : ' I come to 
 the master for orders, but he is dressed in a red 
 jacket, and, with one knee over a pole and his 
 head downward, is swinging himself. His hair 
 hangs down and waves in all directions, the 
 blood has rushed to his face, and* one does not 
 know whether just to gaze at him or to ask for 
 one's orders/ " 
 
 The year 1859 was spent in Moscow, with 
 long intervals at Yasnaya Polyana, and one or 
 two visits to St. Petersburg. During this year 
 Tolstoy wrote his story, "Family Happiness," 
 and finished that remarkable sketch already re- 
 ferred to, "Three Deaths." The story, "Family 
 Happiness," is charming; an adjective which 
 does not fit many of his best and strongest 
 
 119 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 works. A seventeen-year-old girl, Mascha, an or- 
 phan, lives alone with her governess and younger 
 sister on their estate, and falls in love with the 
 first man who comes into her awakened woman's 
 soul ; that man being Sergei Michaelovitsch, her 
 neighbor and guardian. The affection which 
 springs in the heart of each is ardent and sweet, 
 and its awakening is pictured with the touch of 
 a man who has the highest conception of human 
 love. Sergei is nineteen years older than Mascha, 
 and is much in doubt whether he ought to link 
 the life of so young a girl to his ; but love, which 
 is stronger than doubt, conquers, and they marry 
 and live happily at his country place. 
 
 The happiness which Tolstoy here pictures is 
 the longing of his own love-hungry heart. " A 
 quiet if lonely life, far away from the city yet 
 near enough to men, with the possibility of 
 being of service to such as are unused to kind- 
 ness, and whom it is easy to befriend ; to do the 
 kind of work which one believes to be useful. 
 Then recreation, nature, books, music, love for 
 a congenial soul ; that is my happiness, and I 
 cannot imagine anything higher or better." Yet 
 the happiness of which the hero of the story 
 
 120 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 dreams is not the happiness for which his wife 
 longs ; she grows restless and sighs for the life 
 of the city. They move to the capital, she is 
 caught in the whirl of its pleasures, and does 
 not wish to return to the country with her hus- 
 band ; so, in spite of their two children, a break 
 occurs, and he goes home alone. She does not 
 realize her position or how others may regard it, 
 until an Italian count tries to make love to her. 
 Then she returns to her husband ; but the happi- 
 ness which they now find lacks the fire and the 
 romance of the love which was lost, although it 
 grows strong and pure in their common devo- 
 tion to their children. 
 
 This story is important because the author is 
 trying to formulate a theory of marriage, and 
 a happiness in married life which is not based 
 upon the carnal or what men call the romantic, 
 but upon something purer, deeper, and better. 
 As if to foreshadow his own coming experience, 
 he wrote the story, "Three Deaths." The un- 
 willing and harrowing death of the rich woman 
 who clings to every fiber of life until the last 
 moment, is contrasted with the death of the old, 
 worn-out peasant, whose life indeed was " labor 
 
 121 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 and sorrow," but who glides quietly into the 
 unknown, without fear. Crude, rough, and rude 
 are his surroundings, yet no lying phrase reaches 
 his ears, which are soon to be closed to all hu- 
 man sound. He gives his boots, his only trea- 
 sure, to the boy who watches by him, and asks 
 in return some memorial upon his grave, a 
 stone or a wooden cross. He dies almost as 
 quietly as the tree which is cut down by the boy, 
 and out of which he will make the cross for the 
 peasant's grave. 
 
 These two stories dealt with problems which 
 had not yet come into Tolstoy's life for solution, 
 but which were coming nearer to him every mo- 
 ment. His favorite brother, Nikolai, was showing 
 strong symptoms of consumption ; so it was de- 
 cided to send him abroad, his brother Sergei 
 and his sister Maria accompanying him. Soden, 
 in Germany, was chosen by the physicians as 
 the proper place in which to effect a cure, and 
 inasmuch as Turgenieff was also there, the deci- 
 sion was quickly made and carried out. Turgenieff 
 was exceedingly fond of Nikolai, whom he called 
 " The Old Sage," and of whom he said after his 
 death, " he was a splendid man ; smart, humble, 
 
 122 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 and kindly affectionate." After his brother's de- 
 parture Tolstoy felt very much depressed. The 
 business of carrying on his estate grew burden- 
 some, anxiety for his brother, from whom he had 
 not heard since his arrival abroad, oppressed him ; 
 so, to relieve himself and be near his brother and 
 of service to his sister, he decided to go to them, 
 and wrote to his friend "Fyett " to that effect. 
 
 His journey this time was by way of St. Pe- 
 tersburg and the sea. He reached Stettin on 
 the fifth of July, leaving immediately for Berlin, 
 where he arrived with a torturing toothache 
 which spoiled for him the first few days of his 
 stay there. Germany could not fail to be inter- 
 esting to Tolstoy ; for it was not only the land of 
 the modern philosopher but also the country in 
 which the social question was taken from the 
 revolutionary arena into the peaceful school- 
 room to find itself interpreted in law and life. 
 Berlin was beginning to be the great intellectual 
 and political center, and already had in it those 
 elements which have since made it one of the 
 most beautiful and best governed cities in Eu- 
 rope. While Tolstoy felt everywhere the severity 
 of law, he also felt the strong undercurrent of 
 
 123 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 love which was then drawing men together and 
 creating that class consciousness which made of 
 the laborer's cap a crown, and of Social Demo- 
 cracy a religion. 
 
 He heard a number of popular lectures upon 
 sociological subjects, attended sessions of the 
 Worker's Union, and listened to a few lectures at 
 the university which revealed to him the quality 
 of the German pedagogic pabulum. What inter- 
 ested him most was the public-school system; 
 and he went purposely to Leipsic to have a 
 glimpse of its schools, which were considered the 
 best in the country. 
 
 From Berlin he went to Dresden, where he 
 visited Berthold Auerbach, whose stories he had 
 read, and to whom he felt himself greatly drawn. 
 'Auerbach was as much the revealer of the Ger- 
 man peasant as Tolstoy was of the Russian, al- 
 though they stood in different relation to their 
 subjects. Auerbach contrasted the straightfor- 
 wardness and honesty of village life with .the 
 corruptness and complexity of the life of the 
 city, and tried to liberate the peasant from the 
 slavery of the new civilization which was being 
 pressed upon him, much against his will. The 
 
 124 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 simplicity of Auerbach's narrative, the educa- 
 tional quality by which his work is permeated, 
 the purity and nobility of his life, attracted Tol- 
 stoy, and the few days that they spent together 
 in Dresden were memorable to both of them. 
 
 Tolstoy next went to Kissingen, where he took 
 treatment as a preventive of consumption which 
 he thought he had inherited, and which he be- 
 lieved was manifesting itself. In Kissingen he 
 met Julius Froebel, a nephew of the founder of 
 the Kindergarten system, and himself deeply in- 
 terested, not only in pedagogic matters, but in 
 anything which concerned the social well-being 
 of the masses. Froebel relates that Tolstoy gave 
 expression to queer notions, among which was 
 the thought that Russia would some day surpass 
 Germany in educational matters ; " for the Rus- 
 sians," he said, " were yet an unspoiled people, 
 while the Germans were like a child which for 
 years had been receiving a wrong education." 
 He communicated to Froebel his ideas of a new 
 educational system, and the plans of a school, 
 the beginning of which had already reached the 
 experimental stage. The people were to him 
 mystical beings, into whose depths no one had yet 
 
 125 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 penetrated, and out of whom great and remark- 
 able things were to come. He spoke sympathet- 
 ically of communism; and in the labor trusts, 
 which had their forerunners in Russian life, and 
 are called " artels," he saw outlines of the future 
 social world. 
 
 Disquieting news of his brother's condition 
 came to him, and he went to Soden on the twen- 
 tieth of August ; arriving there, he found Niko- 
 lai so ill that his recovery was not expected. 
 Tolstoy went with him to the south of France, 
 where he died in his arms on the twentieth of 
 September. Tolstoy's letter to his friend " Fyett " 
 is written on the seventeenth of October, and is 
 full of despair, evidently having been written 
 under the influence of Schopenhauer, whom he 
 was beginning to read and appreciate. He 
 writes : " He literally died in my arms. Nothing 
 in my life has made such an impression on me. 
 He was right when he said, ' Nothing is worse 
 than death ; ' and when one remembers that it is 
 the end of everything, then there is also nothing 
 worse than life. Why should one work and worry 
 when of that which was Nikolai Tolstoy nothing 
 remains ? He did not say that he felt the coming 
 
 126 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 of death, but I know that he was listening for its 
 approaching steps and knew positively what was 
 before him. A few minutes before he died he 
 dozed ; suddenly he awoke with a start, and said, 
 ' What was that ? ' He was beginning to feel 
 his absorption into nothing ; and if he found no- 
 thing on which to take hold, 1 what shall I find ? 
 Much less than he ; and assuredly I shall struggle 
 with death as he has struggled. To the last minute 
 he held on to life, did everything himself, tried 
 to work, asked me about my plans, and gave me 
 his advice. But I believe that he did all these 
 things, not from a really natural impulse, but 
 because of his principle. One thing remained 
 with him to the end, nature. The evening 
 before he died he went into his room and sank 
 exhausted upon his bed by the open window. I 
 came to him, and he said to me, with tears in his 
 eyes, 'What a happy hour I have had/ . . . 
 ' Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return.' 
 But one thing is left : the vague hope that in 
 nature, of which we are a part on earth, some- 
 thing remains, and something will be found. 
 All who saw Nikolai die, said, 'How peace- 
 
 1 Nikolai's was a very religious nature. 
 127 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 fully he has passed away ! ' But I know what 
 a torture death has been to him, because none of 
 his feelings escaped me. A thousand times I say 
 to myself, ' Let the dead bury their dead ; ' but 
 what shall I do with the remaining strength? 
 One cannot persuade a stone to change its 
 course and fall upwards instead of to the earth 
 whither it is drawn ; one cannot laugh at a joke 
 which has grown tedious ; one cannot eat when 
 the hunger is satisfied. To what purpose is 
 everything, when to-morrow is to begin the death 
 agony with all the mysteries of a lie, of self- 
 deception, and it all ends in nothing for you ? 
 Is n't it amusing ? ' Be virtuous, be useful, happy, 
 as long as you live/ say the people one to an- 
 other, and you say that happiness and virtue 
 have their root in truth. But the truth which 
 I have discovered in my thirty-two years is, that 
 life is terrible. You write, ' Take life as you find 
 it, because you yourself are to blame for the 
 position in which you find yourself/ I take life 
 as I find it, but as soon as man has reached the 
 highest plane of his development, the truth which 
 he loves above everything else is awful. When 
 one comes to see that clearly and plainly, he 
 
 128 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 wakes, and says like my brother, 'What is that ? ' 
 Yet it is plain that as long as one wishes to know 
 the truth and to tell it, he endeavors to know it 
 and to tell it ; that is the only thing in the world 
 of morals which remains for me, and higher I 
 cannot go. This one thing I shall do ; but not 
 in your form of art. Art is a lie, and I cannot 
 longer love a lie, although it is beautiful. . . . 
 I shall remain here this winter ; for, after all, it 
 is the same thing where I live." 
 
 Thus deeply crushed, with views of life of a 
 decidedly somber color, and a theory of his own 
 art like that which he announces decades later in 
 his " Confessions/' he nevertheless gathered both 
 courage and strength, left the Riviera and went 
 to Geneva ; from there again to Italy, through 
 which he made an extended trip, and where he 
 gave its art a more careful glance. In Mar- 
 seilles, where he stopped on his way to Paris, he 
 visited the public and industrial schools, and came 
 in touch with the social movement of France. 
 
 From Paris he went to London. England 
 always stood high in his estimation, although 
 he did not like that type of the English which 
 traverses the whole world and is disappointed if 
 
 129 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 it does not find all of it to be a suburb of London. 
 " It is the country of the noblest ideals and yet 
 also of the coarsest materialism," Tolstoy said in 
 a passing conversation ; and from the idealistic 
 standpoint it was to him the most sympathetic 
 of any country in Europe. He felt himself espe- 
 cially attracted to Ruskin, and although they 
 never met they were closely related in spirit. 
 Both were aristocrats to their very finger-tips, 
 and both were making the way straight for the 
 coming of a democracy. Both were artistic na- 
 tures, yet laid great stress upon the value of 
 common labor. Both formulated theories of arts 
 in which they were not masters, and which have 
 caused much shaking of heads among the artists. 
 Ruskin was as intense as Tolstoy, but not so 
 concentrated; he was as religious but without 
 being so rationalistic. In both of them the reli- 
 gious element is an important part, and both 
 have interpreted it "in terms of human rela- 
 tions." Tolstoy attended a session in the House 
 of Parliament. He visited the Tower and the 
 dreadful East Side of London, where he saw civili- 
 zation at its worst. He went to Brussels, where 
 he remained but a short time, and, returning to 
 
 130 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 Russia by way of Germany, he visited Weimar, 
 Gotha, and Eisenach. In Eisenach he climbed to 
 the Wartburgh, another Luther, he, born on 
 a brighter day, in a darker country. In a visit- 
 or's book he wrote a sentence short and true : 
 " Luther is great." Tolstoy and Luther are not 
 so far apart as passing time has made them ; and 
 they have fought upon the same battlefield with 
 nearly the same weapons and the same enemy. 
 
 In 1861 Tolstoy was again in St. Petersburg ; 
 and from there he went through Moscow to Yas- 
 naya Polyana. With the full determination to 
 make use of the experiences gathered abroad, 
 he immediately asked the government for the 
 privilege of establishing a public school in which 
 he wished to develop his pedagogic ideas. 
 
 This year was an unfortunate one for Tolstoy, 
 for it brought a complete severing of friendly 
 relations with Turgenieff. The cause, as usual, 
 was a trivial one. They were the guests of 
 "Fyett" on his estate in Stepnakoff, and Tur- 
 genieff was telling of the education of his ille- 
 gitimate daughter. He had engaged for her a 
 governess who was very anxious to develop in 
 her the altruistic feeling. " Now," he said, "she 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 makes my daughter mend the clothes of the poor 
 people." "And do you approve that?" asked 
 Tolstoy. " Of course I do ; it brings the child in 
 touch with the real need of the people." " And 
 I," replied Tolstoy hotly, " believe that a finely 
 dressed child mending dirty clothes is simply 
 performing a theatrical scene." "I won't let 
 anybody talk that way to me," replied Tur- 
 genieff, not over-gently. "And why should I 
 not say just what I think?" was Tolstoy's battle- 
 cry. One word brought another, and the damage 
 done was so great that a duel was talked of but 
 fortunately averted. This little incident kept 
 these two great men apart for nearly seventeen 
 years, to their mutual regret ; and both of them 
 were to blame, although neither of them acknow- 
 ledged it. The unprejudiced lookers-on cannot 
 help putting more blame upon Tolstoy, whose 
 exaggerated sense of truth knew no bounds, and 
 who needlessly offended a great man and a loyal 
 friend and admirer. Tolstoy suspected Tur- 
 genieff of professional jealousy ; but there was 
 never a trace of it in him, and he treated the 
 younger man with the most generous respect. 
 They were two opposite natures, as Turgenieff 
 
 132 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 said : one of them, Turgenieff, a modern, a 
 Westerner, and an artist, every fiber of his be- 
 ing in the present ; and Tolstoy, although just 
 as little a child of the past, eager to roll time 
 backward, to turn away not only from all the 
 achievements of civilization, but also from his 
 own deeds and talents, to become " a voice in 
 the wilderness." 
 
 He wrote this year the already spoken of 
 " Cossacks," built upon material brought from the 
 Caucasus ; a shorter story, " Polikushka," which 
 he regarded as " mere stuff " which " any man 
 might write who could wield a pen." He also 
 organized his school, published a pedagogic jour- 
 nal called "Yasnaya Polyana," made plans for 
 new literary work, and held the office of justice 
 of the peace, which was no sinecure, inasmuch 
 as it meant settling the quarrels which arose 
 after the liberation of the serfs, and the allot- 
 ment of land to them. Tolstoy says : " Through 
 that year I was justice of the peace, school- 
 teacher, journalist, and author, and nearly un- 
 nerved myself by the tasks, the struggle in my 
 court was so great and my work in the school 
 so unsatisfactory. My writing in the 'Jour- 
 
 i33 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 nal/ talking one way and then another, which 
 came from the desire to teach everybody and 
 yet to hide the fact that I knew not what to 
 teach, grew so repulsive to me that I threw the 
 whole thing aside and went to the ' Steppes/ to the 
 ' Bashkires/ to drink ' kumiss/ to breathe fresh 
 air, and to lead a purely animal life." Strength- 
 ened, he returned from the " Steppes " in the 
 south of Russia ; the skies grew brighter, his 
 courage had risen, his hold on life was stronger, 
 and he began to think seriously of marriage; 
 which was to end his dissatisfaction with life 
 and bring the long-sought quiet and happiness. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 TOLSTOY'S MAKRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 
 
 No human problem which pressed itself upon 
 Tolstoy was permitted to work itself out secretly. 
 " I have no secrets," he says ; " everybody may 
 know what I am doing;" and from the first 
 perplexing questions which troubled the half- 
 awake brain of the child, through the whole 
 scale of human emotions, he permits us to listen 
 to him as he tries to answer or solve them. 
 With the same frankness with which he un- 
 covers the heart of the child and youth, he re- 
 veals the heart of the man who is beginning to 
 feel the joys and sorrows of his first true love. 
 When he tells in his story, " Family Happiness," 
 of the growth of the love of Sergei Michaelo- 
 vitsch for Mascha, the daughter of a childhood's 
 friend, he is simply telling the story of his own 
 love for Sofia Andreyevna, whose mother, a Rus- 
 sian woman, was his dear friend (and only about 
 a year and a half his senior), and whose father 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 was Dr. Baer, a German physician. Tolstoy was 
 attracted to their home, not only by the friend- 
 ship which bound him to the mother, but also 
 because he found in its pure and hospitable 
 atmosphere much of that which other houses 
 lacked. Countess Tolstoy says that her husband 
 was attracted to her parents' home because of 
 its fine aristocratic spirit, while he maintains 
 that it was because of the democratic principles 
 which prevailed in it ; for the daughters not only 
 knew how to speak four languages fluently and 
 play the piano artistically, but could supervise a 
 household, and if necessary perform all the labor 
 themselves. 
 
 Although Tolstoy was many years older than 
 the young woman upon whom his choice had 
 fallen, his love from the first was ardent and 
 strong. He hesitated, however, to declare it, and 
 his attentions were so general that the friends 
 who kept a watchful eye upon him could not 
 determine whether his visits were intended for 
 the mother or the daughters, and, if for the 
 daughters, for which one. The burdens by 
 which he had loaded himself grew greater every 
 day ; the government had looked with suspicion 
 
 136 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 upon his schools, the problem of developing his 
 own life according to his high standards grew 
 more difficult, and he yearned for the life of 
 which he had long dreamed - " life by the side 
 of a pure woman who would breathe peace upon 
 him and who, while sharing his labor, would in- 
 crease his joy." If ever a man thought of mar- 
 riage " advisedly and soberly," it was Tolstoy ; 
 for although he was drawn to Moscow by that 
 resistless power which he knew to be the power 
 of love, he withstood the temptation to declare 
 himself, and looked in silent admiration upon 
 the young girl, in whom the promises of a 
 beautiful womanhood were beginning to be 
 fulfilled. 
 
 One day that same autumn a carriage drove 
 into the park at Yasnaya Polyana, and out of it 
 sprang three young women, who were followed 
 by their mother, Mrs. Baer. They were on the 
 way to their grandfather's estate, some fifty 
 versts behind Yasnaya Polyana, and a short stop 
 among their friends was as pleasant to them as 
 it was to Tolstoy, to whom their presence brought 
 great delight and seemed a fulfillment of his 
 dreams. Sofia, the second daughter, was what 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 we would call a tomboy, but without very much 
 emphasis on the boy; for she was womanly, 
 graceful, and beautiful, yet as "playful as a 
 kitten." She loved tennis and other outdoor 
 sports, jumped over fences and ditches, climbed 
 trees, and made the woods ring from her laugh- 
 ter. Somber old Yasnaya Polyana seemed to 
 have been re-created by the presence of this 
 young fairy, whose every step Tolstoy followed 
 and upon whom his eyes rested fondly. For him 
 there existed only two classes of women " the 
 one, which was composed of all the women in 
 the world except Sofia, and who were heirs to 
 all the feminine faults, just common human 
 beings and the other class, just her alone, 
 without a fault and high above all others." Al- 
 though no one knew that his attentions were 
 centered upon her (and the mother thought that 
 they were surely intended for her eldest daugh- 
 ter), Sofia, with that intuition which belongs to 
 woman, had not only divined his love, but it had 
 also awakened in her the same feeling. 
 
 Mrs. Baer and her daughters left Yasnaya 
 Polyana after a three days' visit, and there was 
 something in the glance of Tolstoy's eyes and 
 
 138 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 in the pressure of his hand when he bade Sofia 
 good-by which made his riding after them in a 
 few days and his appearance at Ivizy quite nat- 
 ural and not unexpected to her. He came with 
 the strong desire to ask Sofia to be his wife ; and 
 while they were alone under a shading tree, she 
 sitting on a wooden bench in front of a table, he 
 looking down on her chestnut-brown hair and 
 into her grayish-blue eyes, the desire ripened 
 into determination. She was playing with a piece 
 of chalk, writing on the table, or rather just mak- 
 ing marks, when he said : " I have been wishing 
 to ask you something for a long time ; " and the 
 grayish-blue eyes looked into his, frightened but 
 friendly, as she said: "Please ask." He took the 
 piece of chalk out of her fingers, and wrote the 
 first letters of the words of a sentence which 
 was very complicated and which she had to de- 
 cipher. " And what is this, and what is that ? " 
 he asked of one word after another ; and with 
 wrinkled forehead and blushing cheek she an- 
 swered him. " And this word ? " he asked again, 
 and she said, "It means never, but it is not 
 so ; " and taking the crumbling chalk from him, 
 she wrote four letters which did not form the 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 words of an intricate sentence, and he needed 
 no one to ask him, " What is this, or what is 
 that?" He knew what they meant; for all she 
 wrote was e-v-e-r. This declaration of his love he 
 used in a more complicated form in his "Anna 
 Karenina," where Levin thus declares himself 
 to Kitty, his future wife. While in the story the 
 mother seemed at first opposed to the union, in 
 reality it was the father, Dr. Baer, who bluntly 
 and definitely refused to give his consent. He 
 wished to see his oldest daughter married first ; 
 and not until Tolstoy threatened to shoot him- 
 self if the father persisted in his refusal did he 
 yield. 
 
 Tolstoy wished to be married immediately ; he 
 did not understand why he should have to wait 
 for the consummation of his wishes until the 
 trousseau was finished ; and he begged off month 
 after month of the time set by Mrs. Baer, until 
 finally the 23d of September, 1862, was settled 
 upon as the date on which the ceremony was to 
 be performed. He went at everything connected 
 with the business of being married in an awk- 
 ward and reluctant fashion. His struggle was 
 especially great when he had to go to confes- 
 
 140 
 
LEO TOLSTOY, JR. 
 
 The son who has literary tastes 
 
. 
 
 TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 sion, a matter which he had long neglected and 
 in which he did not believe, but without which 
 he could not marry. Yet he would have gone 
 through the fire if it had been between him and 
 his Sofia ; so he went to the church and down 
 upon his stiff knees, receiving absolution from 
 the gentle, simple-minded priest, " who, indeed, 
 could pull a tooth without hurting ; " or, in other 
 words, who could forgive sins without disturbing 
 the conscience. Tolstoy listened to the service 
 now absent-mindedly and now critically ; for al- 
 though he did not believe anything, he did not 
 yet know but that he ought to ; and while he 
 denied his faith before the priest, he was not quite 
 sure when he reached home whether, in trying 
 to be perfectly honest, he had not after all told 
 an untruth. 
 
 The day of the wedding found Tolstoy more 
 nervous and excited than the cool-headed bride. 
 He had to be ordered about like a school-boy, and 
 was as much confused about the right and left 
 hand as a raw Russian recruit who receives his 
 first lesson in drilling. He felt deeply the quickly 
 mumbled words of the priest ; and the music of 
 the invisible choir which repeated over and over 
 
 141 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 again, " Bless them, Lord ! " echoed in his 
 heart. " Eternal Lord," prayed the priest, " who 
 hast united that which was separated, who hast 
 made the indissoluble ties of love, and who 
 blessed Isaac and Rebecca, these are their de- 
 scendants according to the covenant. Bless them, 
 these thy servants, Leo and Sofia, whom I my- 
 self bless ; for thou art a most merciful God, full 
 of love for men, and we praise thee, the Father, 
 and the Son, and the Holy Ghost, throughout 
 eternity, amen." The rings were exchanged, but 
 not without their first being mixed ; the priest 
 said, " We unite the servant of God, Leo, to the 
 handmaid of God, Sofia ; " and Tolstoy had en- 
 tered into the long-looked-f or harbor. "Fyett, 
 dear old boy, dearest friend," wrote Tolstoy, 
 intoxicated by his happiness, "I am married 
 two weeks and am a new, an entirely new crea- 
 ture." 
 
 Sofia entered completely into the thoughts and 
 plans of her husband. She was as idealistic as 
 he, but much more practical ; she took posses- 
 sion of keys and closets, brought order into con- 
 fusion, and drove the leisurely horde of servants 
 and peasants into desperation, if not into a faster 
 
 142 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 gait. She had inherited from her father some- 
 thing of German thrift ; and the rubles were not 
 permitted to roll out faster than the kopeks came 
 walking in. She kept the books and the cash, be- 
 came general manager and overseer, and again 
 Tolstoy writes to " Fyett," " I have made an impor- 
 tant discovery : Inspectors, overseers, and village 
 elders are a nuisance. I have done away with 
 them, and Sofia and I are way up to our eyes in 
 farming. We have bees, sheep, a new orchard, 
 and a distillery. I live in a world which lies so 
 far away from all literature and all criticism that 
 when I receive a letter like yours, my first 
 thought is one of astonishment and surprise 
 as to who has written 'The Cossacks/ or 'Poli- 
 kushka'I" 
 
 In the summer of the next year " Fyett " came 
 on a visit to which he had been repeatedly urged ; 
 and he paints in glowing colors the idyllic pic- 
 ture which he saw. Dressed in a light gown, 
 Sofia came running to meet him among the white 
 birches, a sapling herself; Tolstoy was at the 
 pond, catching crabs which they had for supper. 
 Everything was bright, hopeful, full of life and 
 full of peace. It was a glorious evening which 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 he spent with them ; there was no trace of any 
 pressing problem, and no weighty questions were 
 discussed. It was just life at its best ; a self- 
 effacing life in which Tolstoy forgot himself and 
 all the problems of existence. 
 
 The young couple was not spared some dis- 
 illusions, for Tolstoy was still very human and 
 his wife had never pretended to be anything else. 
 He loved her passionately and trusted her im- 
 plicitly ; yet he was jealous, and when the yellow 
 monster controlled him most, he looked every- 
 where for an imaginary lover, and then was 
 heartily ashamed of himself. On the 28th of 
 June, 1863, their eldest child was born. With 
 its first cry Tolstoy awoke from his dream, and 
 the old questioning spirit began to torment him 
 again about the meaning of life and its develop- 
 ment. Neither his happy marriage nor the birth 
 of his child could fill so large a life completely ; 
 nor did the teaching in the schools and writing 
 his pedagogic journal satisfy him. 
 
 " The Linen-Measurer " is the only thing he 
 wrote during the early part of his married life. 
 It is the story of a horse which philosophizes 
 about property, society, and humanity in general ; 
 
 144 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 and grew out of Tolstoy's love for horses and his 
 critical attitude toward society. So artistically is 
 this done that one scarcely realizes the fact that 
 it is impossible for a poor, halting horse to think 
 so logically and intelligently. Tolstoy has the 
 same love for animals that characterizes the 
 Russian mujik, who makes household pets of 
 them, and lives so close to his stock that he and 
 they grow like one another, patient, slow, and 
 meditative. Walking through the markets of 
 Moscow with a friend, Tolstoy pointed to the 
 small, unkempt, good-natured horse which stood 
 among the pots and kettles that the mujik had 
 brought to the market, and noticed this very 
 resemblance. He never passed a horse without 
 petting it, and when it was ill-treated he felt for 
 it as for a human being. 
 
 The years up to 1877 were filled by diligent 
 work : the writing of his longest two stories, 
 the looking after his estate, which he tried to 
 improve in every way possible, teaching in the 
 public schools, and, what was the most impor- 
 tant, training his own children. "War and 
 Peace," which took five years for completion, 
 needed constant and painstaking historical study ; 
 
 H5 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 but books were far away and difficult to get. 
 The Russian censor kept strict watch upon every- 
 thing that breathed thought from the printed 
 page. The libraries in Moscow which were well 
 stocked by historic books were always in confu- 
 sion ; for there was no catalogue (neither is there 
 yet one, although it has been coming for some 
 thirty years), and Tolstoy had to work painfully 
 and laboriously. His most productive time was 
 winter, or when winter was passing away, when 
 the huts of the peasants began to be thawed out 
 from the surrounding snow. Spring brought the 
 cares of the farm, which were constantly grow- 
 ing greater ; for in the measure in which he tried 
 to carry on the work intelligently, the peasants 
 grew more stupid and less reliable. When he 
 wrote to " Fyett " about the progress of his sto- 
 ries, he never forgot to mention his timothy and 
 clover, or his sick horse, and to ask for this or 
 that favor, from the buying of a rope to an agri- 
 cultural implement. When spring came, which 
 in Russia does not come like a " dancing psal- 
 tress," but like a troop of rough, boisterous boys, 
 his thoughts turned ardently toward that side 
 of nature which cannot be plowed or sown ; and 
 
 146 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 in imagination he saw the coming summer in all 
 its beauty. "A friend is good, but Nature is 
 better ; she is a friend whom one does not lose 
 in death, for when one dies he is completely- re- 
 united with her." He feels that Nature is the 
 one thing that connects him with the higher 
 world ; and " if one were not conscious of her, so 
 that in stumbling one can catch hold of her, life 
 were an evil thing indeed." 
 
 Tolstoy grew mentally lazy in the summer ; 
 the physical and mental joys were so great that 
 he forgot or neglected the pen. Visitors came 
 flocking during that season, and although he 
 jealously guarded his time and strength, he was 
 always a genial host, who thought it his duty 
 to entertain the company, and always was the 
 soul of it. " Fyett " writes to him that he is 
 alone, and he replies, somewhat fretfully, " For- 
 tunate man to be alone. I have a wife, three 
 children, and a baby, all of whom are sick. 
 Fever and heat, headaches, coughs," the whole 
 catalogue of infants' diseases, had descended 
 upon them and kept him from work. He is glad 
 when visitors come, even if only to quarrel with 
 them ; and he does quarrel with most of them, 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 although good-naturedly. Often he complains: 
 "I am doing nothing; it is a dull, dead time 
 with me ; I do not think or write, but feel my- 
 self pleasantly stupid." This stupidity was in 
 reality his period of ripening ; thoughts crowded 
 his brain thick and fast, and he absorbed them 
 like a sponge. He read much of the German, 
 French, and English classics, but they made no 
 impression upon him. Schopenhauer came to 
 him like a revelation, and he was astonished that 
 no one had discovered that pessimistic genius ; 
 unless it was, as Schopenhauer so often says, 
 that " besides idiots, there are no human beings 
 in the world." 
 
 The next year Tolstoy began the study of 
 classic languages, a matter which he had neg- 
 lected in his youth, and in which he now found 
 much pleasure. " From morning till night," he 
 writes, " I learn Greek and do nothing else. I now 
 read Xenophon at sight, although for Homer I 
 use a dictionary, as it gives me a little trouble. 
 I am. happy that God has sent me this foolish 
 notion. First of all, I find real pleasure in it ; 
 secondly, I realize that I never knew what beau- 
 tiful and what beautifully simple things have 
 
 148 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 been created by the words of man ; and, thirdly, 
 I do not and shall not write mere verbiage." 
 The intense study of the Greek, which was fol- 
 lowed by the study of Hebrew, brought on an 
 illness, and for a time it looked as if the dreaded 
 consumption had fastened itself upon him. He 
 went to Samara to drink kumiss, and returned 
 strengthened, ready for the greater work before 
 him. Following his illness came the death of the 
 youngest boy; treacherous croup had choked 
 out the little life, bringing sorrow and sadness to 
 Tolstoy, but especially to his wife, who, in spite 
 of her physical strength, suffered deeply from 
 this affliction, upon which still others were to 
 follow. 
 
 Tolstoy's aunt, Tatyana Alexandrovna, died 
 not quite a year afterwards, and he writes : "She 
 died slowly and gradually. I have been used to 
 death ; nevertheless, hers was, as is the death 
 of each person who is near and dear to us, a new 
 and terrible experience." It was to him like 
 losing his mother ; for she had been with him 
 from his earliest years until he left her to go to 
 the university. Another child, a ten-months-old 
 baby, died during the same year, so that the 
 
 149 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 angel of death had scarcely turned from their 
 door until he came again. 
 
 The education of the children was no little 
 task, and one which was entered into with much 
 thought, but in which the parents were not a 
 unit. The Countess did not wish her children to 
 serve as an experiment, and they received the 
 customary education in the usual manner, through 
 tutors and governesses. It is true that much 
 liberty was given them, that they were not driven 
 to their tasks, and that they were the constant 
 companions of their parents ; but the method 
 was a compromise, and brought none but the 
 customary results. Strong as Tolstoy was in his 
 convictions, he did not feel that he should force 
 his wife and children into his way of thinking; 
 and at Yasnaya Polyana it was soon the fash- 
 ion for every one to go his own way. Friends 
 of the family call this coming and going and 
 do-as-you-please fashion the "Tolstoy style"; 
 and it has its advantages as well as its disad- 
 vantages. 
 
 Countess Tolstoy was in many respects a model 
 wife, and to be the wife of a genius is no easy 
 task. Uncomplainingly and joyfully, she bore 
 
 150 
 
MARIA LEVOVNA 
 The second daughter 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 him thirteen children in twenty-seven years, 
 nursing all of them but one herself. She was 
 their companion and friend, and nine of them 
 grew into manhood and womanhood by her side. 
 For love of her husband she buried herself with 
 him in Yasnaya Polyana, until she thought that 
 for the sake of the children they must move to 
 Moscow. She went with him through every 
 phase of his moral and spiritual development, 
 and stopped short only when to continue would 
 have endangered the educational and social stand- 
 ing of the children. One cannot blame her for 
 stopping just where she did stop, but one cannot 
 help regretting it. True it is that the children 
 might have grown up like peasants ; but they 
 would have been the sires of such a peasantry as 
 Russia has never known, and of which it is sorely 
 in need. Nine such peasants would have stood like 
 strong pillars in a new social temple, while they 
 are now nine aristocrats among ninety thousand 
 or more of their kind, no worse and no better 
 than the others. Among the sons, Leo, Jr., alone 
 has literary tendencies and some talent. He has 
 written a number of plays, and in one of them 
 his father discovers real dramatic power, although 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 the public does not seem to share this opinion. 
 He is married to an excellent Danish woman and 
 lives in St. Petersburg, where he is endeavoring 
 to be of some public service. Another son is an 
 official of the government, while the others 
 have married rich wives. Two of the daughters 
 have married nobles of the highest rank; so 
 that nearly all his children have gone over into 
 the camp of his sworn enemies. During these 
 years Tolstoy was beginning to know that he was 
 made of the stuff of which martyrs are made ; 
 and martyrs and reformers ought never to marry. 
 No man can press a thorny crown upon the head 
 of the wife and the children he loves ; and a wife 
 of Countess Tolstoy's tender and devoted nature 
 can always slip a piece of velvet under her hus- 
 band's crown just where he wishes it to press 
 most heavily. She always knew what he needed, 
 even if he did not wish it, and although he was 
 beginning to sway the world by his thought, he 
 was often swayed by her thoughtfulness. Had 
 Tolstoy married a woman less practical, less de- 
 voted to the material side of his interest, and less 
 careful of everything that concerned his health 
 and comfort, he would no doubt have died long 
 
 152 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 ago ; but many people ask themselves whether 
 he would not have lived longer ; for he would 
 have died either a victim of his enemies or a 
 sacrifice to his principles; and these insure a 
 longer immortality than being cuddled in a soft 
 bed and living beyond the allotted threescore 
 years and ten. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 TOLSTOY AS PEDAGOGUE 
 
 THE difference between a Russian aristocrat and 
 a peasant is social, rather than cultural as it is 
 in Poland, for instance, where the two seem to 
 belong to separate races and nowhere have a 
 point of contact. In Russia they are more closely 
 related than the aristocrat allows, or the peasant 
 knows. They are " chips of the same block " ; the 
 one carved and polished, and not always thor- 
 oughly, the other rough and crude, lying just 
 where he fell ; and the two are an immeasur- 
 able distance apart. In Tolstoy they seemed to 
 meet ; for he is the finest product of the Russian 
 aristocracy, and feels himself drawn toward it, 
 although he resists the attraction as best he can 
 resist it. At the same time his love for the soil, 
 for the homely peasant and his homelier beasts, 
 manifests itself strongly in him, and he was the 
 first to cry out : " Take your feet from the body of 
 the peasant ; for you are trampling on your own 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 flesh." He was quick to see the unspoiled good 
 in him, and for the good which was spoiled he 
 felt himself and his class responsible. 
 
 The Russian peasant is, like all Russians and 
 all other human beings, more or less, a big bun- 
 dle of contrasts. He is faithful and suspicious, 
 honest and false, simple-minded yet shrewd, in- 
 dustrious and lazy, good-natured yet a furious 
 fighter. He is one of Russia's many unsolved 
 problems and unfinished products which Tolstoy 
 felt it his duty to help solve and finish. On the 
 19th of February, 1861, during his absence 
 abroad, the edict which liberated the serfs had 
 been signed and the difficult task of readjustment 
 was about to begin. As most of the serf -owners 
 looked upon the emancipation of the serfs as 
 ruinous to themselves and the peasantry, the gov- 
 ernment found in them a great unwillingness to 
 obey the new and revolutionary law. A few, 
 including Tolstoy, had set their serfs free before 
 the law was passed ; but to the majority it was 
 a greater hardship than was the freeing of the 
 slaves for the Southerners, as the Russians not 
 only had to give up their human property but 
 also much land, for which, however, they were 
 
 i55 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 to be recompensed ; but the payment was to 
 be slow and long drawn out. Each peasant 
 was to begin his new existence as a land-owner, 
 and to the former serf -owners themselves was 
 intrusted the task of reorganization. Tolstoy 
 was appointed by the Senate as one " mirovoy," 
 or justice of the peace, before whom differences 
 were adjusted and quarrels laid aside. To him it 
 was no empty honor, nor was he unfitted for the 
 office ; for he was strong yet tender, he had an 
 abnormal sense of right and yet was peace-loving. 
 He was a splendid organizer, and it is fair to say 
 that the peasants in his district, although they 
 were judged by a superior, were served as by 
 one of their own number. There was no little 
 complaint made by the owners of the " souls," as 
 the serfs were called, because of his partiality 
 towards them ; and although he tried to be per- 
 fectly just to both parties, he had small patience 
 with those of his neighbors who saw in the 
 mujik an inferior being, born for servitude only. 
 The peasants were also hard to manage, for they 
 had no idea of the difference between mine and 
 thine, and when it came to the division of pro- 
 perty, they could not see why they might not 
 
 156 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 have this piece of land as well as that, or why 
 this noble could not dispense with a particular 
 bit of meadow which they desired. Once very 
 servile, they now tried to take the bit into their 
 own mouths and run away, quite unconscious of 
 the fact that they were still passengers in the 
 cart which they were pulling and that the only 
 fundamental difference between their new rela- 
 tion and the old one was that now they would 
 be paid for the pulling, while formerly they got 
 but scant food and much whipping if the master 
 was so inclined. 
 
 Tolstoy saw in the serfs' emancipation a ful- 
 fillment of his own desires, but could not help 
 feeling disappointed later as to its material re- 
 sults for the peasants. He never thought that 
 this humane act came too soon, but he felt after 
 a few years that the peasants were not quite 
 capable of taking care of themselves. They had 
 a chance to buy land but did not do so ; they could 
 easily have increased their stock, but instead of 
 that it decreased ; the soil which they might have 
 improved grew more impoverished ; and when 
 they should have aided one another in their 
 new communal life, selfishness as well as poverty 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 increased. The freeing of the serfs did not quite 
 solve the problem, because the product, the pea- 
 santry, had to be finished first, and Tolstoy contin- 
 ued with still greater ardor the education of that 
 incomplete, overgrown child, the mujik. Tolstoy 
 had begun his educational experiment very 
 young, when he knew but little about pedagogic 
 principles and was not aware that the organiza- 
 tion of private schools was not permitted by the 
 government. He had gone abroad largely to 
 study the schools in the west of Europe, quite 
 unconsciously obeying the almost universal prin- 
 ciple that " nations go West to study, and East 
 to teach." In 1859 he organized two schools 
 near his estate, and when he returned in 1861 a 
 third one was added. He had brought with him 
 a German assistant and four university students 
 from Moscow, whom he had trained for this 
 special task. In December of the same year a 
 fourth school had to be opened ; and before long 
 Tolstoy was the superintendent, principal, and 
 teacher of twelve schools, which he constantly 
 visited and in which he taught the Russian lan- 
 guage, singing, drawing, and Biblical history. 
 The central school was at Yasnaya Polyana, in a 
 
 158 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 wing of his residence, and consisted of two rooms, 
 a physical cabinet, and adjoining them two liv- 
 ing-rooms for the teachers. Manual training was 
 also attempted, and a carpenter's bench stood in 
 the hall above, while in the one below it was a 
 crude gymnastic apparatus. 
 
 The first principle which Tolstoy announced 
 was that there should be absolutely no compul- 
 sion used anywhere in any way. Perfect liberty 
 was the watchword ; if the peasant did not care 
 to go to school, it simply proved that the educa- 
 tional system, as well as its product, was unsatis- 
 factory. " What right have we," he says in his 
 pedagogic journal, " to force a peasant to study, 
 when we do not quite know what or how to 
 teach? The West has a method which has an 
 historic development, and it can be defended 
 upon that ground ; but in Russia we do not know 
 yet what is good and what is ill." There was to 
 be no imitating any method ; there was, indeed, 
 to be no method, or, as he puts the whole mat- 
 ter tersely, " The only method of education is to 
 experiment ; the only standard, Liberty." Or 
 somewhat more clearly he says again, "The 
 public schools should meet the needs of the 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 people ; but what these needs are can only be dis- 
 covered by studying them and experimenting 
 upon them." His school was conducted in this 
 way : at eight o'clock in the morning a bell was 
 rung by one of the boys who slept in the school ; 
 for in winter not all the children could return 
 to their homes. The bell was a signal and not a 
 call, and who would come, came. If they were in 
 time, well and good ; if they were tardy, no one 
 noticed it. They carried nothing in the shape 
 of books, as all the work was done in the school- 
 room and not much of it out of books. The 
 children could make all the noise they wished 
 to, and they took full advantage of the privilege, 
 although not any more than in some schools 
 where they are supposed to be "seen and not 
 heard." Nor did the noise subside when the 
 teacher appeared ; and when he opened the desk 
 to distribute the books and writing materials 
 they rushed at him, each one eager to get his 
 own first. The seats were not assigned accord- 
 ing to any method, but each child sat just where 
 he chose ; some sat on the floor, others stood 
 near the teacher's desk, and all did just as they 
 pleased. Children of one neighborhood natu- 
 
 160 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 rally flocked with one another, and the girls also 
 naturally drifted toward each other. They stayed 
 in the school-room seven hours ; but of these so 
 many were filled by apparent play and so few by 
 work that no one found them too long. Russian 
 history and religion were taught in one room, 
 and all the children attended those classes to- 
 gether. Although there was a regular schedule, 
 it was seldom adhered to ; for the teacher al- 
 lowed himself the same liberty which he gave to 
 the children. He taught as long as he thought 
 that they cared for a subject, and often prolonged 
 a lesson because they were in the " swing " of it ; 
 while another theme was no sooner begun than 
 it was changed because the school was not in 
 the mood for it. When the children were most 
 interested, as in reading or history, they crowded 
 close to the teacher in pellmell fashion ; although 
 by instinctive courtesy the girls and the smaller 
 boys were permitted to stand closest to him. 
 
 When Tolstoy entered a room everything 
 stopped, and the pupils surrounded him beg- 
 ging for a story; for the children knew him 
 to be a splendid story-teller, and they listened 
 to him as attentively as did the grown-ups the 
 
 161 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 world over. Many of his best folk-tales have 
 their origin in these school-room visits, and he 
 frankly acknowledges that the children helped 
 him to make them. He told them about his im- 
 prisonment in the Caucasus, his adventures with 
 bears, described the antics of his favorite dogs, 
 retold according to Russian taste the "Arabian 
 Nights," and wrote for them what is regarded as 
 one of his finest folk-tales, " God sees the truth, 
 though He does not tell it at once." A primer 
 which he wrote at that time has gone through 
 twenty editions, and is still popular with the 
 people as well as with the educators. If the 
 weather was good, Tolstoy and the children ran 
 out of the school-room into the woods, to the 
 meadow, or the pond. They bathed and fished 
 together, and in the winter made snow-men or 
 pelted one another with snowballs. The foremost 
 boy among them was Tolstoy himself, who was 
 the leader in all their pranks. 
 
 This method, although he did not permit it to 
 be called that, attracted and received its full 
 share of criticism. A school without law, order, 
 or schedule, and with teachers and principals 
 who behaved themselves like little boys, was 
 
 162 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 something to be severely condemned. The one 
 criticism which both the state and the individual 
 made in common was, that pupils from such a 
 school could not be trained to be good subjects 
 of an autocratic government, or desirable chil- 
 dren of parents who exacted obedience. Tolstoy 
 replied that it was not the business of his schools 
 to train, but to educate ; that training rested 
 upon force and law, and had its reason in the 
 state, the church, the family, and society as 
 they were organized. " It is reasonable," he said, 
 "that the state wishes to train, for it needs men 
 for various purposes to fit into the niches already 
 built for them ; the church also wants the 
 children trained, so that they may obey and be- 
 lieve ; so does the family, because it wishes the 
 children to grow into something of the same 
 fashion as the parents." Society, he claimed, 
 desired children trained in a certain way, for 
 no healthful purpose, but simply to satisfy the 
 pride of the human mind. Consequently its 
 methods bear the most dangerous fruit : such 
 as universities and university training. He 
 judged all such institutions by those of Kazan 
 and Moscow, and their fruits by the educated 
 
 163 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 proletariat which they created, and so came to 
 the conclusion that universities serve no good 
 purpose. "For they do not spring from any 
 real need felt by the people, they do not train 
 those necessary to humanity, but only such as a 
 corrupted society needs." The West, he declared, 
 had universities because they grew and devel- 
 oped with the people, and perhaps served their 
 purpose ; but the East had its development still 
 before it, and one does not know just what uni- 
 versities it will need, if any. To Tolstoy, Russia 
 was a world apart, which could healthfully de- 
 velop only according to the character of its peo- 
 ple, whom he considered radically different from 
 those in the West ; a thought that has served 
 to strengthen the Slavophilic movement which 
 makes this its chief doctrine, but in a much 
 less humble spirit. 
 
 While Tolstoy did not believe in training a 
 child, he believed in its education, which he 
 thinks should be based upon the individuality 
 of the child, and therefore should give the com- 
 pletest liberty. " The school is not to have rigid 
 schedules and far-reaching plans ; but every 
 science is to be studied and taught in the 
 
 164 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 completest freedom, and it will gradually and 
 harmoniously adjust itself to the needs of men. 
 The school, then, is not an institution in which 
 to train children, or to force knowledge upon 
 them, but it is to influence the child definitely ; 
 and influence is without force." 
 
 He pictures a school in which everything 
 which a child instinctively dreads shall be ab- 
 sent. No high desk for the teacher, no straight, 
 monotonous rows of benches, no long wastes of 
 blackboards before which children feel them- 
 selves so small and insignificant. His ideal is 
 that everything should constantly change with 
 the needs and tastes of the children. A school 
 as he saw it was to be a kindergarten, univer- 
 sity, museum, theater, picture-gallery, forest, 
 library, and meadow, all blending into one. This 
 was indefinite enough ; but it had in it the peda- 
 gogic ideals of the future. Tolstoy knew that 
 his plans were idealistic and that the coming 
 generations would cling to their institutions as 
 they found them, " upon the principle of the sick 
 man who said : ' The medicine has been bought, 
 therefore I must drink it/ ' 
 
 More radical than his method of education, 
 165 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 and in greater contrast to present standards, was 
 his view of its aim and purpose. Markff, the 
 inspector of the Latin School in Tula, a very 
 excellent pedagogue and a personal friend of 
 Tolstoy's, wrote a criticism of his school in which 
 he says, in brief, that " Upon the education of 
 the younger generation by the old, upon the com- 
 munication of its views and conclusions to the 
 younger generation, which give it a basis for 
 development, upon these rests the progress of 
 humanity." In answer to which Tolstoy comes 
 out bluntly, and says : " I do not believe in this 
 progress, it is not a universal law ; progress is 
 not always necessary, nor is it always good. 
 Progress in one direction is paid for by a back- 
 ward step in another. In Russia only the useless 
 classes believe in progress; nine tenths do not 
 believe in it; for it does not add anything to 
 their happiness. The peasant does not need the 
 telegraph, or the railroads which entice him from 
 the country to the city, neither does he need the 
 printing-press ; he is not quite sure that reading 
 does not spoil him. We must believe the pea- 
 sants more than we do society ; for they are in 
 the majority and without them society cannot 
 
 1 66 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 live ; but the peasant can live without society." 
 He does not believe in progress, and therefore 
 does not think that one generation has a right 
 to interfere in the education of the next. Here 
 it was pointed out that Tolstoy overrated the 
 peasant, and, moreover, that he acted contrary 
 to his principle, the very existence of his school 
 being the proof of it. He defines education as 
 " A human activity which has back of it a desire 
 for equality in knowledge, and the fundamental 
 law of the self -progression of knowledge." Fi- 
 nally, he came to this conclusion : " We must go 
 to school to the children and not the children to 
 us." Their simplicity and honesty, their native 
 intuitions, their great thoughts, which sprang up 
 quite unconsciously, his great love for them, by 
 which he measured all their virtues, his love for 
 everything natural, and his abhorrence for every- 
 thing artificial, made him echo the saying of a 
 prophet of long ago : "A little child shall lead 
 them." He studied them intently ; the birth of 
 each thought, its formation into speech, its trans- 
 ference to paper ; all this he felt through and 
 through ; becoming as much as possible " like 
 the least of these little ones," he saw their 
 
 167 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 kingdom. He found in them the creative power 
 of the artist, and full of astonishment he cries 
 out : " I was surprised and frightened when I 
 made this discovery ; I felt like a treasure- 
 seeker who has discovered the magic root by 
 which he will find the prize he desired ; or as 
 one who comes suddenly upon the Stone of Wis- 
 dom which he has sought incessantly for years." 
 One story which has appeared among his works 
 is the product of these children, and is called 
 " Soldier's Life." It is the biography of a boy 
 whose drunken father is sent away among the 
 soldiers and who comes home a new man. Tolstoy 
 thinks that nothing better than this has been 
 written in Russian literature, and he bases his 
 opinion upon the fact of its naturalness and 
 simplicity. He felt the Old Testament to be a 
 great source of inspiration, and the children 
 disclosed to him its simple grandeur. He says : 
 "I tried to teach them the New Testament, 
 geography, the history of Russia, and natural 
 history; everything was easily forgotten, and 
 listened to rather unwillingly. Only the Old 
 Testament remained in their memories, was lis- 
 tened to delightedly, and retold by them when 
 
 1 68 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 they reached their homes. It stayed with them 
 to this degree, that, after two months, they 
 could, with only a few mistakes, write down 
 what they had heard. I believe that the Old 
 Testament, this book of the childhood of the 
 race, will always remain the best book for the 
 childhood of every man." Tolstoy does not be- 
 lieve in expurgated or abridged editions of the 
 Scripture, but thinks it should be read by every 
 child, with all its secret and sacred thoughts and 
 its great and lofty poetry, which bring him under 
 the enchantment of this new and old world, and 
 which awaken in him the desire to develop him- 
 self. To Tolstoy it is the power which lifts the 
 curtain before the child, who willingly enters 
 that world and reaches out after the New Tes- 
 tament, after the history of his own country, 
 and the sciences of nature. "There is no book x 
 like the Bible to open to the child this new 
 world, and to hold him to love and to know- 
 ledge. I mean this also for those who do not 
 believe it to be a revelation. I do not know a 
 book which gives in such compact and poetic 
 form every phase of human ideas as the Bible. 
 All the questions which arise out of the mani- 
 169 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 festations of nature have their answer here; 
 all the original relations of man to man, the 
 family, the state, religion, are known for the 
 first time through this book. The power of truth, 
 and wisdom in its simple, childish form, take hold 
 of the child's mind with their powerful charm. 
 The Psalms of David influence not only the 
 thought of the child, but he learns to know for 
 the first time the whole fascination of poetry in 
 its inimitable purity and strength. Who of us 
 has not wept over the story of Joseph and his 
 brethren, or listened to the story of the shorn 
 Samson with much anxiety and beating of the 
 heart ; and who has not received all those other 
 hundreds of noble impressions which we have 
 drawn in as with our mother's milk ? I repeat 
 it," he says, " without the Bible the education 
 of the child in the present state of society is 
 impossible." 
 
 Strange, new, revolutionary, and impracticable 
 as was Tolstoy's pedagogic activity, it worked 
 untold good, and it was due not to his method 
 or lack of it, but to his deep, pure, and unselfish 
 love for every child that touched him. The 
 school was a family, and it was remarkably 
 
 170 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 fortunate in its father. Each child was to him a 
 perfect work of the Creator ; he did not believe 
 that it was " vile and full of sin." He believed 
 implicitly, with One greater than himself, who 
 put a little child in the midst, and said of it, 
 " Except ye become as this little child, ye shall 
 in no wise enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." 
 That kingdom he considered the goal of the race ; 
 and all education had to prepare for it, even if 
 the child was not lifted one inch toward what 
 men call progress. These simple thoughts were 
 still wrapped in much philosophic verbiage ; but 
 little by little they unwound themselves from 
 their binding grave-clothes, to stand out clear 
 and vivid, the goal of his own life as well as 
 that of the human family, in which he was be- 
 ginning to feel himself " the chief of sinners," 
 and " not the least among the apostles." 
 
 171 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 "WAR AND PEACE" 
 
 IT was no wonder that Tolstoy's health suffered 
 during the period of his manifold activities. He 
 was judge, teacher, farmer, journalist, and " last 
 but not least," author. Quietly, like a miner in the 
 depths, and just as painfully, he worked, gather- 
 ing his material for a large historic novel which 
 was to be called " The Decembrists," and based 
 upon the suppressed political rising in December, 
 1825, the year in which Nicholas I. ascended the 
 throne. Tolstoy's personal acquaintance with 
 some of the participants in the movement led 
 him to the consideration of that theme. One chap- 
 ter was written and the whole fairly well sketched 
 when, in studying the period which led to this 
 little upheaval, he came upon that great, dark, 
 and terrible picture of the Napoleonic invasion. 
 It so fascinated him, as it fascinates every one 
 who reads the history of Russia or of France, 
 that he cast aside the subject and the material 
 
 172 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 of the first story and began his "War and 
 Peace," to which he gave five years of prepara- 
 tion, but which was written and finished in a 
 surprisingly short time. In November, 1864, he 
 writes to "Fyett" : "I am much downcast and 
 do not write at all ; nevertheless, I am working 
 really painfully. You cannot imagine how hard 
 this preparation is ; this deep plowing of the soil 
 upon which I am driven to cast my seed. To con- 
 sider and reconsider what will happen to these 
 human beings of my story, which is to be a huge 
 work, to think out millions of possibilities and 
 then choose the millionth part of them, is tre- 
 mendously difficult." 
 
 In 1865 he could already announce to " Fyett" 
 the completion of the first part ; and he writes 
 thus : " These days there is being printed the 
 first half of the first volume of my story. Please 
 let me know what you think of it. You will see 
 that everything that I have written thus far was 
 only trivial ; but that which I have now written 
 I think more of. I am glad that you like my 
 wife, but alas ! I now love her less than I do 
 my novels ; " and he adds, also jokingly, " The 
 greater I grow, the less I love you." 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 In November, 1866, he writes again to this 
 same friend, who was always a very conscientious 
 critic, " In your last letter you tell me some very 
 interesting things concerning my novel. I am 
 quite satisfied by what you say of my hero Prince 
 Andrey ; he is a tedious, monotonous fellow, and 
 only in the first part is he comme il faut You 
 are right about that, but it is my fault and not 
 his. Besides the characters and their movements 
 and meetings one with the other, I still have to 
 work on the historic part, and I doubt that I shall 
 be able to pull through. I have recognized my 
 fault and hope that I have corrected it to your 
 satisfaction. Please, dear friend, let me know 
 just what you find wrong in my story." 
 
 In 1869 the work was finished ; and upon its 
 publication it was hailed by Russian critics as the 
 greatest novel of the nineteenth century. This 
 was superlative praise, but praise in which readers 
 and critics the world over almost unanimously 
 agreed. His great talent is seen not only in the 
 portraiture of classes and individuals, which is 
 done with a rare fidelity, but by the ease with 
 which the whole is written, and which nowhere 
 betrays the fact that back of it is much hard study, 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 and all through it the most painstaking labor. 
 Turgenieff, who was not a biased critic, wrote 
 of it : " ' War and Peace' is the most poetic and 
 artistic, the most beautiful and complete work 
 which has appeared in our literature." When an- 
 other Russian critic writes that " the story has no 
 rival in the whole world," we detect just a little 
 exaggeration ; but he is perfectly right when he 
 says : " This work is a splendid picture of the 
 struggle of our whole nation. Marvelous is Tol- 
 stoy's knowledge of the character of the Russian 
 people, the clearness and purity of his views of 
 life, and the historic and philosophic importance 
 of his characters. He has reproduced the whole 
 epoch to the satisfaction of the historians, who 
 believe it to be scientifically correct." 
 
 While the work has no scientific connection 
 with his former stories, which were largely 
 biographical, or at least of his own time, it 
 is closely related to them. It represents Tol- 
 stoy's mental and spiritual progress as he speaks 
 now through one and now through another of 
 his characters, many of whom were patterned 
 after his relatives who had a part in that famous 
 struggle. The critics, including Turgenieff, found 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 fault with his mysticism and with his emphasis 
 upon religious and philosophical problems which 
 are woven through this book, and which seem a 
 little didactic and out of place. No one, however, 
 can write a story of the Russian people without 
 discussing these questions; especially during 
 a crisis, when such thoughts filled the Russian 
 mind. Napoleon was to the people the " Anti- 
 christ," the war a punishment, and the victory 
 the return of God's favor. Nearly everything 
 which Napoleon did not destroy, be it a holy pic- 
 tare, a shrine, or a monastery, has remained to 
 tnem a proof of. the divine miracle. To-day 
 one may have pointed out to him, by fairly in- 
 telligent people, a picture of the Virgin, in the 
 Kreml, at which it is said a soldier shot, and the 
 bullet was deflected in a miraculous way, killing 
 the iconoclast himself. 
 
 " War and Peace " is the history of three ar- 
 istocratic families widely different from one 
 another, but altogether making a composite pic- 
 ture of Russian society. We see them in their 
 palaces in St. Petersburg, in the fashionable 
 salons of Moscow, in the seclusion of their coun- 
 try homes. We meet them at the chase, in their 
 
 176 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 social intrigues, in field and forest, in the draw- 
 ing-room, and in the splendor of their feasts and 
 festivals. Roused from their lethargy and weaned 
 from their luxuries, we see them again on the 
 battlefield in the thick of the fight, in camp by the 
 flickering watch-fires, with their backs toward the 
 victorious foe. In Moscow we see them once more 
 starving and pale in the lurid light of that con- 
 flagration which destroyed a city but saved a 
 nation ; and at last in the deep, cold snow, the 
 pall of the French army in its flight to France. 
 Count Ilya Rostoff is that type of the Russian 
 aristocrat, unfortunately not rare, who is born 
 " bon-vivant and epicure." Everything which he 
 does not care to study he dismisses and solves 
 by saying : " Splendid." Of culture he knows no- 
 thing, of gastronomy everything. The intricate 
 mixture of a sauce, the roasting of a prairie 
 chicken, are his fields of investigation, and 
 with them his brain and teeth are busy. He has 
 debts from which he will never be able to free 
 himself, nor does he greatly care to do so. He 
 reaches bottom very soon, but never ceases to 
 be a good father, and (what is somewhat more 
 remarkable in that sphere of Russian society), 
 
 177 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 a faithful husband, although his wife is ill and 
 exceedingly nervous. They have four children : 
 Vera, Nikolai, Natasha, and little Petya. Nikolai 
 is a soldier, somewhat stupid and slow, who sel- 
 dom departs from a safe and well-beaten track. 
 Natasha grows from playing with dolls to the 
 longing for real love, a romantic but pure-minded 
 and extremely affectionate child. " She was so 
 happy after her first ball that she thought every 
 human being good, and did not believe in the 
 possibility of evil, misfortune, and sorrow." 
 
 The Karagins, the second family, represent in 
 the head of its household the materialistic aris- 
 tocrat who measures everything by the stand- 
 ard of its money value and its possibility of 
 serving him for his own aggrandizement. Cold, 
 calculating, and without feeling, he plays his part 
 in life and plays it well. Of his two sons, one is 
 stupid, and the other mad from excesses, think- 
 ing only of new spoil for his pleasures. To him life 
 is a series of entertainments which some one is 
 in duty bound to provide for him. He is the 
 logical son of such a father, and to be found to- 
 day in countless editions in the pleasure haunts 
 of which Moscow and St. Petersburg have a 
 
 178 
 
TATYANA SEVORXA 
 
 The oldest daughter 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 good share, and a poor type, and in which these 
 sons scatter the fortunes of their fathers. The 
 daughter Helene fits well into this atmosphere 
 of the flesh, being a future adulteress, whom 
 Napoleon splendidly characterized by saying: 
 " Cest un superb animal." Pierre Besuchoff, the 
 illegitimate son of an exceedingly wealthy father, 
 comes under the influence of Helene and her 
 tricky relatives, and marries her after having 
 inherited his father's millions and some forty 
 thousand serfs. Pierre is near-sighted in more 
 than one way, absent-minded and angular, seem- 
 ing out of place in that society into which the 
 Karagins have drawn him. He bluntly tells just 
 what he thinks, nearly driving his diplomatic 
 hostesses into desperation by his frankness. 
 
 Far away from the tumult of the city and the 
 fashionable crush of its salons, we meet Prince 
 Bolkonsky, the head of the third family. He 
 belongs to that real aristocracy, rare in every 
 country, rarer in Russia ; an aristocracy which, it 
 is true, is very proud, but which has good reason 
 to be so. The Prince has been banished to his es- 
 tate on account of his political ideas, and although 
 the term of his exile has long passed, he remains 
 
 179 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 just where he was sent ; for, he says, " If they 
 want me at court, let them send for me." They 
 do need him, and the chief dignitaries of 
 Russia come and ask his assistance in the war 
 then in progress. He is a man who is severe 
 toward his subordinates, among whom one must 
 count his daughter Marya, whom he loves in 
 his haughty way, and who always prays, be- 
 fore a meeting between herself and her father, 
 that it may pass off peacefully. If she has 
 a thought of rebellion she blames herself, and 
 thinks that she has sinned. She is very homely, 
 like nearly all the good people portrayed by Tol- 
 stoy, who, if he were to paint or describe the 
 Christ, would no doubt do so after the manner 
 of the prophet Isaiah, as " A root out of a dry 
 ground : he hath no form nor comeliness ; and 
 when we shall see him, there is no beauty that 
 we should desire him." But Marya with all her 
 homeliness is beautiful, because out of her large 
 blue eyes shines the love of Christ, " who suffered 
 because he loved men, although he was God." 
 Marya's aim and desire are to bless all who hate 
 her and despitefully use her, and to serve all 
 who need her. "For all the intricate laws of 
 
 1 80 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 human society she finds a solution in the law of 
 love and self-sacrifice." Her brother Andrey is 
 as proud as his father, but more ambitious. War 
 is a field from which to mount to glory ; so he 
 leaves his wife, with whom he is not very happy, 
 and joins the staff of General Kutusoif . Splendid, 
 and characteristic of father and son, is their 
 parting. "Now, farewell." He turned his cheek 
 to the son for a kiss, and embracing him said : 
 " Remember this one thing, Prince Andrey : if 
 you fall I shall suffer." He was silent a moment, 
 then suddenly cried out : " But if I hear that you 
 have not carried yourself like the son of Nikolai 
 Bolkonsky, I shall be ashamed." "That you 
 need not tell me, father," said the son, smiling. 
 Wounded upon the battlefield, looking into the 
 deep sky, he feels the presence of the unknown 
 God, and becomes conscious of his own soul. He 
 says, after reasoning much about it, "There is 
 nothing so sure as the nothingness of everything 
 which I have understood, and the greatness of 
 that which I do not understand, but which is 
 more important." Believed by his relatives to be 
 dead, he returns at the critical moment when 
 his wife gives birth to a son, and her own life 
 
 181 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 passes into the great beyond. After that he 
 buries himself on his estate, wishing to forget 
 and be forgotten. Pierre, the husband of He- 
 lene, is unhappy in another way ; his wife is not 
 loyal to him, and he fights a duel with her para- 
 mour. At the time when life seems such a great 
 puzzle, and everything soulless and material as 
 a stone, he meets a Freemason who attracts him 
 by his ethical views, which are to him a revela- 
 tion and which he accepts. He becomes an ar- 
 dent member of the lodge, returns home, and 
 visits Prince Andrey, whom he is able to awaken 
 from his lethargy to a realization of his duty to 
 his fellow men. Natasha Rostoff, whom Andrey 
 loves, is nearly ruined by Anatol, Helene's bro- 
 ther, and Pierre rescues her from the impending 
 danger. Andrey returns to the field at Boro- 
 dino, and the evening before the battle, appre- 
 hensive as to its outcome, he looks back upon his 
 life and sees clearly the vanity of all his ambi- 
 tions. Coarse and crude seem those flights of his 
 imagination which had always been so alluring 
 to him " Fame, patriotism, altruism, woman's 
 love ; " and now everything pales before the white 
 light of that morning which is rising for him. 
 
 182 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 His apprehensions are justified, and he is severely 
 wounded. While he is being cared for, he hears 
 next to him weeping and lamentation, and re- 
 cognizes Anatol, the would-be betrayer of Nata- 
 sha ; but instead of hate, he feels love for him, 
 in spite of the fact that he is his greatest en- 
 emy. Instead of the feeling of revenge, there 
 rises in him the feeling of pity, and he has an af- 
 fection for all men, whom he now knows to be his 
 brothers, whether they love or hate him. He feels 
 the love and pity which his sister Marya had 
 taught him, and which he never understood. Yes, 
 he will live that love, but now it is too late ; yet 
 not too late, for that divine love never ceases, 
 never can be destroyed. " Love is the essence of 
 the soul." He is taken back to Moscow, from 
 which every one is fleeing. The Rostoffs are just 
 leaving the city; and Natasha persuades her 
 parents to take into their wagon some of the 
 wounded soldiers, although to do so they must 
 leave their valuables behind. Thus it happens 
 that, by the light of the destructive fire which 
 consumed Moscow, Natasha and her lover meet, 
 not to part again until he succumbs to his 
 wounds. Marya, his sister, and Natasha, through 
 
 183 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 being together at his bedside, learn to love each 
 other with that pure love which always emanated 
 from Audrey's sister. 
 
 Pierre is an idle looker-on at the battle of 
 Borodino, but it has great consequences for him 
 also. He is fired by the bravery of the Rus- 
 sian soldiers, is roused from his indifference, and 
 thinks that he will free his country by one 
 stroke, the assassination of Napoleon. Before 
 he can come near the execution of his plans he 
 is arrested, and is in danger of being executed 
 as one of the incendiaries. In prison he meets a 
 common Russian soldier, Platon Karatayeff , who 
 through his conduct communicates to him a phi- 
 losophy of life. " He lived in love/' Tolstoy says 
 of him. " Not in love to one certain person, but 
 to all human beings whom he met. He loved 
 his comrades, he loved the French, he loved 
 Pierre, he loved even his little dog." Platon is 
 shot by the French because he is incapable of 
 marching ; but he continues to live in Pierre, who 
 is a changed man. Natasha says of him to her 
 friends, " He is so clean, so new, so fresh, as if 
 he were coming out of a bath ; you understand, 
 out of a moral bath." 
 
 184 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 In this story, whose history unrolls itself in 
 such an interesting and tragic way, and which 
 ends happily in Pierre's marriage to Natasha, 
 and Nikolai RostofF s to the Princess Marya, the 
 characters are but the mouthpieces for Tolstoy's 
 view of life, which was coming near the point of 
 ripening into a definite philosophy, and of being 
 formulated into a sociology. He says : " In nota- 
 ble, historic movements, the so-called great men 
 are the labels, which name events and periods ; 
 but, just like the labels, they have the least to do 
 with the events." To Tolstoy, the hero of former 
 days, the man who reaped all the glory, and did 
 nothing, had no right to exist. To him the masses 
 were the real hero ; to him there is no science 
 of warfare ; and victory and defeat, everything, 
 rest upon unknown laws beyond the control of 
 men. " Things happen because they must hap- 
 pen ; " a fatalistic view of history which one finds 
 it difficult to share with him. " War and Peace," 
 aside from its artistic merit, is a great historic 
 picture drawn vividly and impartially, without 
 political bias. It is less valuable, although not 
 less interesting, as a philosophical treatise in 
 which Tolstoy struggles with the old problem of 
 
 185 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 predestination and free will. It is of supreme 
 importance, because Tolstoy discovers for us the 
 mass, the common, unknown, unsung unit, which 
 is moved, not by the will of man, but by that 
 power which we call " Providence." He presses 
 upon the attention of thinking men the new sci- 
 ence, sociology. Above all, the book is of interest 
 because all through it is the struggle of a great 
 soul trying to understand the meaning of life. 
 After all the attempts to unravel the tangled 
 web of crossing thoughts, he says, through the 
 lips of Prince Andrey, " Faith is the power of 
 life." When a man lives, he must believe in 
 something. If he did not believe that he must 
 live for something, he would die. Without faith 
 it is impossible for man to live. 
 
 One who reads this book for the interesting 
 story which it tells would gladly dispense with 
 its sociology and philosophy ; one who considers 
 the work solely from its artistic standpoint finds 
 Tolstoy's views obtrusive, and marring the beauty 
 of the whole; but they belong to the autobio- 
 graphy of the author's soul, and without them 
 the " Life of Tolstoy," which he is writing into 
 every story, would not be complete. 
 
 1 86 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 "ANNA KARENINA" 
 
 ANY man who was concerned about his literary 
 career as such would have continued the writing 
 of historic novels, after the phenomenal success 
 of "War and Peace." Tolstoy, however, was 
 being more and more absorbed by the problem of 
 his own life, and to entangle it again into historic 
 events was much too irksome ; nor did it quite 
 harmonize with his view of the province of his art. 
 He had written a few chapters of the discarded 
 " Decembrists," and had begun to study the life 
 of Peter the Great, in preparation for a story 
 dealing with that period ; but although he gave 
 a whole year to this latter task, he suddenly 
 dropped both subjects and began his "Anna 
 Karenina." 
 
 The story has no large historic background, 
 and we are never taken out of the domain of 
 that small world which calls itself by the ge- 
 neric name, " society " ; a domain which Tolstoy 
 
 187 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 now knew better, and loved less than ever. Weak, 
 vacillating creatures they are whom he drew : 
 strong only in maintaining certain worldly stand- 
 ards, and outwardly eager to do , the proper 
 thing, while leading a decidedly improper life. 
 He came in touch with them every day : Betsy 
 Tverskaya, who with one hand holds on to the 
 court and with the other digs in the moral mire ; 
 Stepan Arkadyevitsch Oblonsky, who believes 
 that the " purpose of education is to get plea- 
 sure out of everything," and who manages to do 
 so, in spite of the fact that poor Dolly, his wife, 
 grows prematurely old and wrinkled, and has 
 her life almost ruined because he does not know 
 the meaning of the seventh commandment. 
 
 Then there is Vronsky, who falls in love with 
 Anna, the heroine of the story, the wife of a 
 disagreeable but conscientious official. Vronsky 
 has an exaggerated sense of that kind of honor 
 which prevails more or less in all military and 
 aristocratic circles. He believes that he must 
 pay his gambling debts, but that the poor tailor 
 may wait ; he believes that it is wrong to cheat 
 at cards, but thinks it perfectly proper to run 
 away with another man's wife. These charac- 
 
 188 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 ters Tolstoy met daily in his social intercourse ; 
 he felt them as influences in his own life, and 
 he struggled against them and conquered them. 
 The plot of "Anna Karenina" is the simplest 
 possible ; although there are really two stories 
 in one, side by side, and touching each other at 
 many points. The one story is that of Levin, a 
 homely, angular, country-bred aristocrat, who is, 
 nevertheless, thoroughly democratic and feels 
 himself one with the people. To love or not to 
 love them is not a question for him, because he 
 is a part of them ; nor could he criticise the bad 
 or praise the good, because he could draw no 
 contrasts between them and himself. He works 
 with the peasants, eats his bread in the sweat of 
 his brow as they eat, often wondering whether 
 he ought not to throw aside all the past, its 
 inheritance and achievements, and in reality be- 
 come a peasant. The city is to him a Sodom and 
 Gomorrah, a modern Babylon ; and all his natu- 
 ralness and buoyancy leave him as he comes in 
 touch with its life. He feels keenly the social 
 lies and insincerities which manifest themselves 
 at calls and balls ; consequently he is not a good 
 conversationalist or courtier. He blushes like a 
 
 189 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 girl when an impure subject is broached ; for he 
 is not half so bad as the young and old men 
 around him. He is in love with Kitty, a beauti- 
 ful, but in no way an extraordinary girl, whom 
 he adores with a pure and noble passion, and 
 finally marries. They move to his estate, and 
 although the supermundane bliss of which he 
 dreamed does not quite materialize, they " live 
 happily ever after." In great contrast to this 
 natural and idyllic life is that of Anna Kare- 
 nina, who lives in the world and is of it ; whose 
 husband is cold, exacting, lifeless, and loveless ; 
 " for whom the word love would not exist, if it 
 were not in the dictionary." The moral atmo- 
 sphere which Anna breathes is poisonous, and 
 she has no hold upon anything but her child. 
 She does not love her husband, who is sixteen 
 years older than herself ; religion is absent from 
 her world, and where it is present it is either 
 hypocritically servile or mystical and false. She 
 meets Vronsky, the young cavalier, who has 
 beauty, youth, and strength, but no character; 
 although in his world this last quality is of the 
 least importance. He and Anna seem drawn 
 together by some unseen force, and the newly 
 
 190 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 awakened love is like an uncontrollable fire 
 which burns all bridges behind them. They go 
 abroad together, love each other, and quarrel 
 with each other. Returning to Russia, the ties 
 by which Anna holds him grow weaker ; con- 
 scious of this and the loss of her position in 
 society, which closes its doors to her, she throws 
 herself under a passing train. She is tempted 
 to this mode of ending her life by the memory 
 of having first met Vronsky at a railroad sta- 
 tion, when the maimed body of a workingman 
 was drawn from under the wheels of the en- 
 gine. 
 
 Somewhat in the background, but not indiffer- 
 ently or indefinitely drawn, is the character of 
 Dolly, who is small, wrinkled, pale, and insignifi- 
 cant, between the splendid Anna and the lovely 
 Kitty. In her mended jacket, with her faded 
 hair and complexion, she arouses one's pity as 
 she listens to Anna, who narrates to her the story 
 of her downfall. She is the personification of 
 common, every-day virtue, which " has its own 
 reward " of pain, tears, and poverty. Her hus- 
 band falls as low as, and lower than, Anna ; but, 
 man-like, he has no twinges of conscience, and 
 
 191 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 is unhappy only when, through the discovery of 
 his fall, the household machinery jars. Dolly is 
 a sort of feminine Tolstoy, and his real heroine. 
 Through a peasant "who lives for his soul 
 and believes in God," Levin discovers the way 
 to the life eternal. Faith saves him and his, and 
 makes his home a center of happiness and a 
 spring of life. On the other side is the home of 
 Anna Karenina, in which there is no love, but 
 only unsatisfied passion ; no thought of the soul 
 and so much thought for the body ; no truth, but 
 every word a deception and a lie ; no true mar- 
 riage, but what is really only adultery. Such 
 a home has in it the seeds of death ; and such a 
 life, which was lived only for the flesh, must also 
 "of the flesh reap corruption." Levin's soul- 
 life is with but little change taken from Tolstoy's 
 own experience at this stage of his life. Levin's 
 progress from unbelief to belief begins at the 
 deathbed of his brother, and ends when he learns 
 the power of faith and the secret of prayer. 
 Faith comes to him without blinding him as it 
 did Paul, or making him ecstatic as it did Peter, 
 at Pentecost. Faith has not taken away his old 
 happiness, nor has it overwhelmed him by a new 
 
 192 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 one. He does not know whether it is faith or not; 
 but a new power has come into his life, has com- 
 forted him and brought him peace. He knows 
 that he will remain a man, a human man with 
 many of his old passions and desires ; he will still 
 be angry with his peasants, and will never be 
 out of the reach of temptation. " I shall never 
 quite understand the meaning of prayer," he 
 says : " but I shall always pray, and my whole 
 life shall be independent of the things which 
 happen to me. I shall live no thoughtless minute 
 as before ; but I shall implant into each moment 
 a positive good." 
 
 Although Tolstoy values this story so little, and 
 was very eager to be done "with this tedious 
 Anna Karenina," it marks the height of his 
 artistic power. It is written with much human 
 passion, and in the hands of a man with lower 
 moral ideals and less artistic skill-it might have 
 proved dangerous material. It is realistic to the 
 core, because Russian society is realistic ; it has not 
 a trace of Anglo-Saxon prudery, but calls a spade 
 a spade, and does not blush at it or stumble over 
 it. Tolstoy's realism differs from its Russian 
 namesake, imported from France, in being blunt, 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 plain-spoken, and unscented. Sin may be plea- 
 sant, but it is never beautiful or harmless ; and 
 any one who reads the motto which he has writ- 
 ten over this novel, "Vengeance is mine, saith 
 the Lord," and who understands his plain speech, 
 must know that his realism is as vital as that of 
 the prophets and seers, and that it is not the 
 literary form of decadence. He began the story 
 already knowing the end. From the moment 
 when Anna and Vronsky meet each other with 
 an impure thought which becomes uncontrol- 
 lable, the reader knows what the end will be. 
 No matter where they are or what they do, 
 whether they meet in secret or openly, whether 
 they go to Italy to study art or return to Russia 
 to improve an estate, whether they eat or drink, 
 ride or dance, the shadow never leaves them, and 
 vengeance is expected ; nor does it delay its 
 coming. Only a very perverted or immature mind 
 can find in any of Tolstoy's stories the slightest 
 encouragement to commit sin. 
 
 While "Anna Karenina" was written with 
 much physical vigor, and practically at the prime 
 of Tolstoy's manhood, it was written with the 
 greatest moral passion. He was beginning a new 
 
 194 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 career and seeking a new purpose for his life. 
 The faith in God which in the story is still inde- 
 finite, was ripening into God-knowledge ; and his 
 search after some solution of the pressing pro- 
 blems was being rewarded by his finding it in the 
 Gospel of Jesus, whose apostle he was to be, 
 whose life he was to try to live, and whose pre- 
 cepts he was to teach. "Anna Karenina" was 
 written at this strategic juncture ; and it marks 
 the parting of the ways and the beginning of 
 the new life. A story written in such an atmo- 
 sphere, and which has behind it such moral 
 struggles, cannot be, and is not in the least, 
 impure. There are portions of it in which we 
 should like to soften the realism, and from which 
 we should be glad to expurgate the seemingly 
 unnecessary details of which the Anglo-Saxon 
 does not speak in public ; but Tolstoy could nt>t 
 always stop to clothe naked Russian truth in 
 English tailor-made words, and we shall have to 
 read him in unexpurgated editions or not read 
 him at all. His characters, of which many crowd 
 the small canvas, are clear, plain, living, every- 
 day creatures ; but always types of social and cul- 
 tural development. None of them is put there 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 without a purpose, whether he says or does much 
 or little. Each one is a symbol of something good 
 or evil, something to be chosen or avoided. Tol- 
 stoy 's narrative is as simple as his plot. He never 
 stops to analyze character, but he describes in the 
 simplest way the life of a man, never forgetting 
 the slightest details. He does this with such 
 frankness and acuteness that the character is re- 
 vealed from the first moment, and one is never in 
 doubt "whether it is good, or whether it is evil." 
 As in " Anna Karenina," so in nearly every one 
 of his novels, there are really two stories : the one 
 taken from the life around him, full of varied 
 human interests, never commonplace, always 
 highly dramatic, but not theatrical, and full of 
 poetry which is seldom sweet but always rugged ; 
 a story which is fiction based upon the experi- 
 ence of others. The other one has all through his 
 works the same hero, sometimes under one name, 
 sometimes under another ; it tells little of ex- 
 ternal things, but much of that which happens 
 within the soul. It is philosophic and didactic 
 rather than dramatic and poetical, and is not 
 fiction but history, the history of Tolstoy. He 
 does this, not because he feels himself so impor- 
 
 196 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 tant, but because he desires to know of what value 
 he is to the world, among those others with whom 
 he lives. He knows himself better than any one 
 else knows him. His self -analysis is keen, open, 
 and often seemingly unjust ; but unjust only be- 
 cause we are not used to dealing so honestly with 
 ourselves, and because perfectly honest biogra- 
 phies are rare outside of the Bible. As an artist 
 he wrote what he saw in others, and what he 
 experienced through them in mind and heart ; 
 as a judge, physician, philosopher, and preacher, 
 he wrote what he saw in himself from his earliest 
 youth ; and as he hid nothing from himself so he 
 hid nothing from the public, which was to him 
 not an audience but a judgment hall. So, more 
 and more, the artist gave place to the soul bio- 
 grapher ; much to the chagrin of the critics and 
 perhaps of the reading public in general, which 
 always cared more for the story-teller than for 
 the prophet and seer. 
 
 197 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 TOLSTOY'S CONFESSION AND CONVERSION 
 
 IN January, 1881, Countess Tolstoy wrote to her 
 brother : " You would not know Leo, he is so 
 changed ; he has become a Christian and he re- 
 mains one, so steadfast and true." Back of this 
 simple statement of Tolstoy's conversion, for 
 such it must be called, in spite of the fact that 
 the word has become commonplace and almost 
 meaningless in Protestant America, back of 
 this conversion lie long years of conflict such as 
 few souls have experienced. It was a con- 
 flict of spirit which became so painful that it 
 drew the body into its comradeship of suffering, 
 and the whole man was undone. Had Tolstoy 
 been less rationalistic, or had he been born in a 
 climate where the sun burns poetry into each 
 human thought, he would have described the 
 birth of his soul as a miracle, which might have 
 found a place in the traditions of the church and 
 earned him a " handle " for his name and a halo 
 
 198 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 for his head. By his keen, plain, truthful speech, 
 he reveals to us the whole inner process, yet 
 without making it less a miracle, if that may be 
 defined as something which lies out of the ordi- 
 nary human experience, and which cannot be 
 apprehended by the senses. It is true that dur- 
 ing Tolstoy's whole life he had struggles with 
 himself and his surroundings ; but they came at 
 long intervals, and served in no small measure to 
 stimulate his artistic faculty, although they left 
 him spiritually just where he was before. Mos- 
 cow society accepted his moralizing under the 
 cover of fiction, just as it accepts the fiction 
 which has no cover and no morals. In spite of his 
 love for the peasants, his altruistic schemes, and 
 his pedagogic journal, he had serious lapses into 
 aristocratic Russia, and Prince Obolensky wrote 
 in his memoirs : " Very often I met Count Tol- 
 stoy at Peter Samarine's, where there was much 
 society, and where hunts and races were organ- 
 ized. Tolstoy was then (1870) not a philosopher 
 as now, but a jolly enthusiastic sportsman as well 
 as a splendid conversationalist, and his quarrels 
 were always interesting." 
 
 The happiness which Tolstoy found in his 
 199 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 marriage did not give him that hold upon life 
 nor the self-control that he expected from it. 
 His passions were not dead, nor was his thirst 
 quenched, nor were his ambitions stilled by the 
 new life, although his wife brought into it all 
 that he could reasonably expect. She loved him 
 as passionately as he loved her, and perhaps less 
 fitfully, after the manner of women ; she looked 
 carefully to the ways of her household, and was 
 indeed the ideal of Lemuel's mother: "The 
 heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, 
 so that he shall have no need of spoil." She was 
 economical because Tolstoy never was, and she 
 was ambitious for him because he had ceased to 
 be so. He was more or less swayed by her per- 
 fectly human and rational ideals, and in a letter 
 to " Fyett," written in 1873, he speaks of her 
 influence over him. On the eve of his greatest 
 soul struggle he says : " Every day for nearly a 
 whole week I have been sitting for the painter 
 Kramskai, who is doing my portrait for the 
 Treytiokof sky gallery. I have consented to do it 
 because the artist himself came and promised my 
 wife that as a return for the favor he would 
 paint one for us cheaper; and my wife persuaded 
 
 200 
 
Drawn by J . Repin 
 
 COUNT LEO TOLSTOY 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 me." This last phrase does sound as if the 
 story of our first parents were not altogether 
 fictitious ; but it is just possible that Tolstoy was 
 not so willing a victim as was Adam. He him- 
 self says of that period : " The new conditions in 
 a happy home life drew me away entirely from 
 seeking to find the common purpose of life. My 
 whole being was centered in my wife and chil- 
 dren, and for their sakes in care for the enlarge- 
 ment of my means to carry on the increasing 
 household." He was so happy that, " If a good 
 fairy had come down from some strange world 
 and asked me if there were anything I wished 
 for, I could not have thought of anything to ask." 
 Fifteen such years passed, during which his 
 home, his schools, and his new books bade fair to 
 drive away those higher aspirations and silence 
 his questioning soul ; yet the inner strife never 
 ceased, for it manifests itself in his writings and 
 in his letters to his friends, which sound much 
 more serious than ever. " You are ill," he writes, 
 " and think of death, but I am well, and must 
 constantly think of it." And again, soon after 
 this : " For the first time you talk to me of God 
 and of divine things ; but I have been thinking 
 
 201 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 of these questions for a long time. Don't say 
 that one cannot think about them ; one not only 
 can, but one must. At all times the best men, 
 that is, the true men, have thought about them, 
 and if it can't be done as you say, we must find 
 some way in which it can be done. Have you 
 ever read Pascal ? " 
 
 A more positive and definite evidence of a 
 coming change appears a little later, when he 
 writes : " Although I love you as you are, I am a 
 little displeased with you because like Martha, 
 ' You are cumbered with much serving ' when 
 ' But one thing is necessary/ The mere joy of 
 living is too great in you ; when some day the 
 thread of life threatens to break, it will go hard 
 with you. I have no interest in life, and nothing 
 seems to matter." The question of the purpose 
 of life, to which he had to cling whether he cared 
 to or not, grew slowly to be the all-absorbing 
 one. He says of this time: "Something very 
 strange happened to me. I had moments of great 
 doubt, when life itself seemed to come to a 
 standstill. I did not know how I should live or 
 what I should do. I lost my balance and became 
 melancholy. At first this occurred at long inter- 
 
 202 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 vals, and I took up old habits again ; then it 
 happened of tener ; but at the time that I fin- 
 ished writing ' Anna Karenina' my despair was 
 so great that I could not do anything but think 
 of the dreadful condition in which I found my- 
 self." He sought, asked, and knocked in all 
 directions, and received no answer. " But I must 
 know," he writes. " Before I can trouble myself 
 about my estate or my children or the writing 
 of books, I must know why I do it. Before I 
 know that, I can do nothing ; I cannot live." 
 
 The thought of self-destruction came upon 
 him with a strange force, and he had to hide 
 everything which might have suggested suicide. 
 As the sight of a rope roused in him the desire 
 to end his life, so the sight of wife and children 
 made him wish to cling to it. " I tried with all 
 my might to break away from life, just as for- 
 merly I endeavored to make my life better." All 
 this came to him in his prime, in the midst of 
 what men call happiness ; he was a proud father, 
 the owner of a large estate, and at the zenith of 
 his literary career. He was physically so strong 
 that he could do a day's work in the harvest-field 
 without fatigue ; while mentally he felt himself 
 
 203 
 
TOISTOY THE MAN 
 
 sound, and able to stay eight or ten boors at 
 his desk. Yet he cared not to exist unless he 
 knew die purpose of his life He turned from 
 science and from modern culture with a feeling 
 of repulsion ; f or he f eft the inability of the first 
 to solve the really important problems of life, 
 and the hollowness and falseness of the second, 
 if one were honest enough to penetrate its fine 
 veneer. Like a questioning Job he stood before 
 the awful something, uttering his complaint, and 
 the answers of Socrates, Buddha, and Schopen- 
 hauer were like the stereotyped phrases of Job's 
 friends, who tried to heal his hurt by common- 
 place words. Not unlike King Solomon, having 
 tested of aU that the worid could give him, Td- 
 stoy cries out: "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity." 
 "What profit hath a man of an his labor which 
 he taketh under the sun? One generation pass- 
 eth away 3>mi flufiyrKp^ jyyMyfitKm cometh, but 
 the earth abideth forever." He turned to the men 
 
 of 
 
 carefully to see how they looked upcm this ques- 
 tkm which had brought him to the verge of de- 
 spair, and he found that they had four ways out 
 of the difficulty . One was the way of ignorance 
 
 204 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 They did not know that such a question ever 
 penetrated a human brain ; they sipped honey 
 until something called their attention to the bit- 
 terness of death, and then they suddenly ceased 
 to sip honey. He could not unlearn what he knew, 
 and consequently could not learn from the igno- 
 rant. The second way was that of crushing the 
 question in the pleasures of life. " Eat, drink, 
 and be merry, for to-morrow thou shalt die ; " or, 
 in the preacher's words which he quotes : "There 
 is nothing better for a man than that he should 
 eat and drink, and that he should make his soul 
 enjoy good in his labor." The wealth which 
 these people have, the pleasures in which they 
 indulge, bring about a moral torpor which makes 
 them forget that there are such things as sick- 
 ness, age, or death. The third way was that of 
 suicide ; ending life, when one recognizes that it 
 is vanity. This was a way out of the difficulty 
 which Tolstoy at that time thought the most 
 honorable and dignified. The fourth way was that 
 of weakness; to know that life as one under- 
 stands it is vanity, yet still continuing it, as if 
 waiting for something better, which never comes, 
 and always eating, drinking, and writing books 
 
 205 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 as he was doing. He finds no answer among the 
 men of his class, and yet, he says, there are 
 millions and millions of men who never think 
 that their lives have no purpose, who in contrast 
 to the restlessness of the ruling minority are 
 calm and quiet, who in spite of hardship, hunger, 
 and cold, have a peace of soul and a harmony of 
 spirit which those do not possess who have 
 wealth, knowledge, leisure, and pleasure. Where 
 do they find the power to live and endure ? and 
 now Tolstoy finds the answer: "Faith is the 
 power of their lives." Faith is the certainty 
 that human life has a purpose, a certainty 
 through which these human beings live ; so he 
 went about seeking it, and was ready to accept 
 any faith which did not ask for the denial of 
 reason : " For that would have been a lie." He 
 studied Buddhism, Mohammedanism, but above 
 all, Christianity, its books and its followers. This 
 study of religions was not a superficial one ; it 
 was so thorough that he knew not only their 
 principles, but he caught also the peculiar flavor 
 and poetry of each. 
 
 In the study of Christianity he turned first to 
 the people of his own position in society who 
 
 206 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 were commonly called Christians. He talked 
 with priests, monks, and theologians of the or- 
 thodox and liberal type ; but he found that their 
 faith had nothing to do with their lives ; that 
 it was a thing wholly apart, that they clung to it 
 for one cause or another, but not for the great 
 reason of finding an answer to the question of 
 the purpose of life. He also found what he knew 
 before that their lives were wholly at variance 
 with their professions. As he found this among 
 priests and laymen alike, he turned his attention 
 to the peasants, in whom he had long suspected 
 that he would find the real treasure. He stood 
 on the highway which led past Yasnaya Polyana, 
 and talked to the pilgrims who went to Kieff or 
 to Jerusalem. He talked to them as few men of 
 his station could talk ; he spoke to them like a 
 brother ; like a child who was going to school 
 to these other children, the Russian peasantry. 
 And they talked to him as they would not have 
 talked to any other nobleman. They looked out of 
 their frank, open eyes into his, and revealed to 
 him the secret of their souls, which really was 
 no secret ; for they revealed it in their lives and 
 looks. 
 
 207 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 These people had what he sought a life in 
 harmony with their faith. " To them life and 
 death are in God's hand, and death is the en- 
 trance into life eternal. They do not fear the 
 mice which gnaw at the root to which they cling, 
 and when they lose their hold they go into the 
 depths without a murmur." Tolstoy learned to 
 love and appreciate the peasants more and more, 
 and for two years he prepared himself for the 
 next step ; that of ceasing to live like a parasite 
 and of giving his life a meaning, by labor and 
 by faith. He began to seek God, and realized 
 that he failed to find him, not because he was 
 not reasoning right, but because he was living 
 wrong. He knew that there must be a God, 
 although philosophy taught him that one could 
 not prove his existence. He ardently prayed for 
 a vision of that God whom he sought with all 
 his heart, but there was no answer, until one 
 day in the spring-time as he was walking through 
 the woods which surround his estate, and was 
 listening to the music of the awakening life in 
 the tree-tops, this came to him like a revelation : 
 " I can live only when I believe in God ; when I 
 do not believe I feel as if I must die. What seek 
 
 208 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 I further ? Without him I cannot live. To know 
 God and to live are the same thing. God is life." 
 Something within him seemed to say : " Live 
 seeking God then, for there is no life without 
 him." " It grew brighter around me and within 
 me, and that light has never left me." 
 
 Thus Tolstoy was saved from despair and sui- 
 cide ; and just as gradually as the thought of 
 self-destruction had come, so now came the 
 thought of life, to abide with him forever. And, 
 strange to say, this new faith and this power to 
 live were really not something new, but the 
 old faith and the old power which were in him 
 when as a child he grew conscious of life. It 
 was only a returning to the belief of his child- 
 hood to the belief that the purpose of life was 
 to be in harmony with the Divine Will ; but with 
 this difference : that formerly he had felt this 
 unconsciously, while now he knew that he could 
 not live without that trust in God. He compared 
 his condition with that of a boy who was put into 
 a boat, he knew not when or where. Some one 
 showed him the direction of the other shore, put 
 oars into his unskilled hands, and left him alone. 
 He rowed as best he could row, and made some 
 
 209 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 progress, but the farther he went, the stronger 
 became the current, which carried him far away 
 from that other shore. Around him he found in 
 increasing numbers those who, like him, were 
 being carried away by the current. Some were 
 throwing away the oars in despair, some strug- 
 gled against the stream, others again, drifted 
 along. The farther he rowed the more he forgot 
 the shore which had been pointed out to him, 
 until at last he let go of the oars in utter hope- 
 lessness. The jolly crews of surrounding boats 
 assured him that their way was the only right 
 one ; and he, believing, rowed with them until he 
 heard the roar of the rapids and saw the de- 
 struction of their boats. Suddenly, in his agony, 
 he remembered the other bank and pulled back 
 to it, although the wind was against him. " The 
 shore was God, and the oars were the liberty 
 given me to find my way back to the shore 
 and be with God." 
 
 With all the zeal of a convert who finds the 
 truth late in life, he turns to the Church, prays 
 devoutly, fasts as often as is decreed, goes to 
 confession, and takes Holy Communion. But 
 soon new doubts creep in, and as might- have 
 
 210 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 been foreseen, his questioning mind cannot be 
 silenced, and, "Why do I do this?" and, "Why 
 do I do that ? " he hears ringing in his ears at 
 every service which he attends. The forms, which 
 in the Greek Church are so numerous and so seem- 
 ingly stupid, repel him because they have no vital 
 connection with life, and the oft-recurring holy- 
 days have no meaning. They celebrated things 
 which he could not believe ; another matter which 
 made him stumble was, that the Church was 
 then praying for the victory of the Russian army 
 over the Turks. He asked himself : " How can 
 one do that when Christ says, 'Love your 
 enemies ' ? " Again he thought of those words, 
 when Alexander III. ascended the throne with 
 vengeance in his heart against his father's 
 murderers. Tolstoy interceded for them in the 
 name of Christ ; nevertheless they were executed, 
 and their death was approved by the Church 
 and its priests. New doubts arose as he came to 
 study Church history. So many churches, so 
 many claims to infallibility ; and how difficult it 
 was to say which was right and which was wrong. 
 He said : " All of them contain truth and false- 
 hood, but I must find the truth." He searches 
 
 211 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 the Scriptures, in which all profess to believe, he 
 studies them ardently ; and like Luther he finds 
 the truth in the Gospels, which he recognizes 
 as the source of all life. As he studies these 
 Gospels, a new vista opens before him, and he 
 sees the Kingdom of God, which is so different 
 from the kingdoms of this world, political and 
 ecclesiastical. 
 
 The call into this Kingdom, which comes to him 
 unmistakably and clearly, he immediately obeys. 
 Like the disciples who "left their nets and 
 followed him," he was ready to leave everything 
 he possessed more valuable indeed than fish- 
 nets and boats. To him, to know means to obey ; 
 to believe means to live ; and obediently he con- 
 forms to the teachings of Jesus as he interprets 
 them. His money he will give to the poor, his 
 life is to be the simplest, his bread is to be 
 earned by the sweat of his face ; and if the art 
 which he forsakes again presses the pen into his 
 hand, it shall be consecrated to the preaching of 
 that truth which put meaning and value into 
 the life which was so meaningless and valueless 
 that he was ready to throw it away. 
 
 212 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE LIFE AS AN INFLUENCE 
 
 THE story of Tolstoy's conversion was carried 
 into all corners of the earth and into strata of 
 society which had never known of him as an 
 author, or realized the moral import of his 
 stories. It seemed that the world had been 
 waiting for a man who would not only interpret 
 the Gospel rationally, but live it radically ; and 
 Yasnaya Polyana at once became a new holy 
 shrine to which pilgrims from afar came by the 
 hundreds. Letters poured in upon Tolstoy in such 
 numbers that it was found possible to answer only 
 comparatively few. Many of those who crowded 
 around him at that time came because, like him, 
 they had puzzled over the great question of life, 
 and desired to hear from his own lips how it 
 was answered. Others, burdened by their sins, 
 came to repent, and others again came with 
 strange heartaches to find here their relief. 
 Many of those who went to him found, after 
 
 213 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 doing farm labor for a few days, that sore 
 muscles would not heal sore hearts, and that 
 carrying water from the pond did not lift bur- 
 dens from the conscience. So they returned to 
 the world which they had left, with mixed feel- 
 ings toward the physician whom they could not 
 help admiring, but whose medicine they found 
 too strong. 
 
 A very small but important minority remained 
 to labor, and after leaving Tolstoy, took up life 
 even more severely than he was living it. Among 
 them were Prince Chilykoff, who sacrificed his 
 millions, Vladimir Tshertkoff and Paul Biryu- 
 koff, who are living in exile on account of their 
 avowed Tolstoyan tendencies, and who in Geneva 
 and London are publishing Russian newspa- 
 pers, whose spirit is in harmony with the teach- 
 ing of their master. Beside these there were 
 numbers of the nameless ones who were " desti- 
 tute, afflicted, tormented, and of whom th$ world 
 was not worthy." Most interesting is the fact 
 that, like a new Messiah, he drew to himself a 
 large number of thinking Jews, some of whom 
 organized communities according to his prin- 
 ciples. One of these is that of Mr. Femerman 
 
 214 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 and Mr. Butkyevitch, in the district of Cherson, 
 in southern Russia. Others, emulating Tolstoy's 
 example, forsook their bartering to begin tilling 
 the soil ; and the best Jewish colony in Palestine 
 was recruited from Jewish university students 
 of Odessa and Moscow, who were " Tolstoy mad," 
 as they expressed it. The Jews came to Yas- 
 naya in goodly numbers to see a man who was 
 really living the Christian life, not merely 
 preaching it ; and under the influence of that life 
 they accepted the Christian faith. At first Tol- 
 stoy encouraged the baptizing of one or two of 
 them into the Greek Church ; but he always 
 expresses himself as regretting this act. Uf he 
 had had Jewish blood in his veins, he would have 
 found it difficult to prevent his being declared the 
 Jewish Messiah. As it is, he has been the first 
 Russian who has interpreted Christianity to the 
 Jew in terms which he could accept, and in a 
 form that has nothing of the idolatry of the 
 Greek Church, which is the greatest barrier to 
 the Jew's acceptance of the Christian religion. 
 Tolstoy was besieged by over-anxious mothers, 
 who accused him of bringing pressure to bear 
 upon their sons, who had developed the " Tolstoy 
 
 215 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 disease " ; and he and all his followers were con- 
 sidered ripe for the lunatic asylum. It even hap- 
 pened that in some instances men who returned 
 to their estates, to live according to Tolstoy's 
 teachings, were declared insane, while others 
 were sent to prison and into exile. But Tolstoy 
 was neither the organizer of a movement nor a 
 zealous propagandist. He did not care whether 
 he had followers or not ; and when men and women 
 came to worship him, he would say in the lan- 
 guage of the Angel of the Apocalypse, " See thou 
 do it not, worship God ; " and when they called 
 him Master, he said : " One is your Master, even 
 Christ." When they called him Teacher, he 
 answered : " Call no man Rabbi." He did preach 
 to every man who came ; if he were rich he took 
 him into the woods and looked into his soul with 
 his piercing but kindly eyes, saying repeatedly 
 and insistently : " Sell all thou hast and give to 
 the poor." When the mighty and strong came 
 and asked what to do to be saved, he would 
 tell them : " Thou shalt not kill." When the spir- 
 itually blind came he repeated Christ's words : 
 " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see 
 
 God." 
 
 216 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 To the Socialists, with their grievances and 
 schemes, Tolstoy said : " For man shall not live 
 by bread alone." He was indeed a "Gospel 
 Preacher," so narrow that he saw salvation in 
 nothing but in the teachings of Jesus, and so 
 broad that he saw salvation for all who followed 
 the Christ, no matter to what church they be- 
 longed, or whether they belonged to any. While 
 he did not shrink from accepting the conse- 
 quences of his teachings for himself, he did not 
 force others to do so, and to a friend who found 
 it difficult to part from his land he writes thus : 
 "Do not mind what the world will say about 
 your retaining your property ; it is a question 
 which concerns you alone ; and if your conscience 
 does not condemn you, do just as you have 
 planned." 
 
 In his family circle he was tolerant, allowing 
 each member of it the fullest liberty. Only two 
 of his children believed as he believed, but after 
 a while they also, like so many others, found the 
 path too rugged, and "thenceforth they walked 
 no more with him." Strangers came and offered 
 him their wealth and their services, but he al- 
 ways warned them against too hasty action, and 
 
 217 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 never accepted their money, while more than 
 once he sent men back into their former callings. 
 He could also quickly detect the motive which 
 brought men to him, and would startle them by 
 his keen perception. When a man came bur- 
 dened by a great sorrow, and offered himself for 
 some service without having consciously revealed 
 the cause of his coming, Tolstoy said to him: 
 " Go home, and after your great sorrow has spent 
 itself, come again." A young Russian teacher, 
 repelled by his vocation and inspired by Tolstoy 
 ideals, came to him, and he generously said : " Go 
 back to your desk, you are doing more good than 
 I am." Every one who came, he received gra- 
 ciously, and although his time was more than 
 fully occupied, he gave of it unstintingly to all 
 who asked for it. 
 
 The writer of this volume remembers his first 
 pilgrimage to him, as a young, enthusiastic stu- 
 dent, who had suffered spiritual shipwreck, and 
 saw in Tolstoy the refuge and the harbor. He 
 will never forget how this man, who himself 
 had struggled through, listened to the unripe 
 thoughts of a boy who could scarcely express him- 
 self one who, when he began to speak, hardly 
 
 218 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 knew just why he had come there. In common 
 with others, he felt the magic of that personality 
 which loosened the emotions ; but which held one's 
 tongue the tighter. No priest ever received more 
 honest confession than Tolstoy received ; for lying 
 in his presence was an impossibility. Many men 
 after a first conversation have come back and said : 
 " I am sorry, but I have not told the whole truth." 
 Some people have been repelled by him, but they 
 were those who went to him as they might have 
 gone to the Pyramids, the battlefield of Waterloo, 
 or to some wonderful freak museum. Eude he 
 never was, although many a time his visitors 
 were as inconsiderate of him as they are of his- 
 toric places ; and only his being very much alive 
 saved him from being carried away bodily by 
 relic hunters. 
 
 It is true that in Yasnaya Polyana the curious 
 had much to see which seemed not a little queer 
 to them. Here was a man steeped in the culture 
 of his time, wealthy and highly talented, yet wear- 
 ing a peasant's coat and doing a peasant's work. 
 They laughed not a little when they caught a 
 glimpse of this intellectual giant mending his 
 shoes, when, as they argued, he might have made 
 
 219 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 much money, or created some work of art with 
 those fingers which drew the waxed thread so 
 unskillfully through an old shoe which was not 
 worth the mending. They did not realize that 
 this laborer Count, this shoemaker author, was 
 trying to mend a rent in human society as well 
 as the rent in his shoes. From afar they watched 
 him, as by a mighty effort he followed his pea- 
 sants, cutting rye and oats, " eating his bread in 
 the sweat of his face " under the trees which 
 edge the village fields ; and they said : " What 
 a foolish thing for a man to do", a man who 
 might grace any society by his presence, enhance 
 its pleasure by his conversation, or influence men 
 by his thoughts." They little realized that this 
 man was cutting a swath like that of the giant 
 reaper of whom the peasants tell ; who leveled 
 forests by one sweep of his mighty scythe. Tol- 
 stoy was followed by other reapers, and will still 
 be followed in those fields ripe for the harvest. 
 Each autumn will bring men nearer to the golden 
 days of the Kingdom of God. He was himself 
 unconscious of the power of his example, nor did 
 he realize the oddity of his position. He was not 
 " playing to the galleries," to use the phrase of 
 
 220 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 the street ; he was not playing at all ; he was 
 simply living his faith with an unconscious 
 intensity. His rugged face, with its mixture of 
 peasant and noble, received a new and strange ex- 
 pression. Its strength became suffused by tender- 
 ness, and none could look into that countenance 
 without being conscious not only of the man's san- 
 ity but also of his sanctity. Seeing him, one lost 
 all thought of the strangeness of his position ; 
 for everything blended with his nature harmoni- 
 ously. It was the harmony which follows a great 
 struggle ; it was not stagnation, for the man was 
 still full of vital thoughts, and the strength of 
 his body, mind, and soul seemed inexhaustible, 
 making one feel the influence of that power. 
 
 If the crowds which gathered in Yasnaya 
 Polyana had been asked, "What went ye out for 
 to see?" or, "What have ye seen?" they could 
 have given no intelligent answer. They saw a 
 man who, like the Baptist, was not clothed in 
 soft raiment, yet in those earlier days one could 
 scarcely escape the thought that the peasant's 
 garb which he wore was very becoming, and that 
 he knew it. He was homely, like the heroes of 
 all his stories ; the face was angular, the features 
 
 221 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 were unmodeled and sharp, but the whole gave 
 the impression of great force. He was a piece of 
 original material in which all the possibilities 
 of human nature lodged in their fullness. One 
 realized that he could have been as cold and cruel 
 as Napoleon, or as warm and kindly as Abraham 
 Lincoln ; and that in him dwelt the spirit of the 
 finest aristocrat beside that of the commonest 
 mujik. The spirits of war and of self-sacrifice, of 
 lust and of the highest purity, of deceit and of the 
 greatest truthfulness, of extremest pride and of 
 lowliest humility, mingled in him, and have made 
 his heart their battle-ground. One had the im- 
 pression that although one had seen faces which 
 resembled his among Russian aristocrats and 
 peasants, one had never met just such a man. 
 He was a composite photograph of Russian so- 
 ciety, in which his own self came to the fullest 
 expression. Just as Russian society lacked the 
 middle class, so the feeling for that class seemed 
 in him to be utterly lacking. The physician, the 
 mechanic, the lawyer, the merchant, and all the 
 other products of modern development found in 
 him no sympathizer, and little by little dropped 
 out of the list of his visitors. 
 
 222 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 Those who came were divided by the Tolstoy 
 family into three classes. The first class was 
 small; composed of those who, like Prince Chilyoff, 
 Tshertkoff, and Biryukoff, were Tolstoyans in 
 thought and action. It is doubtful that of this 
 class one could count more than the apostolic 
 number, of which a few were women ; notably 
 among them one with a very uncommon name in 
 Russia, Mrs. Smith, who lives close to Yasnaya 
 Polyana, in an exalted poverty, echoing every 
 thought of Tolstoy ; herself the personification 
 of simple-minded goodness. Among the un- 
 known, one would have to name Mr. Nyikitoff 
 in Moscow, who not only stepped from wealth 
 into poverty, but who also drew the members of 
 his family into his condition, not without dire 
 consequences to them. One of the sons, upon 
 being deprived of his money, shot himself, and 
 the remainder of the household became estranged 
 from its head, who is living in one room in ex- 
 tremest poverty, yet feels rich in the conscious- 
 ness that he is obeying the law of Jesus. He is 
 one of the most perfect examples of the thor- 
 ough Tolstoyan, outranking his master in many 
 respects. Among these might be counted a num- 
 
 223 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 ber of men who were Tolstoyans before Tolstoy ; 
 leaders in the numerous sects in which Russia 
 abounds, and who not only learned from Tolstoy, 
 but also left some valuable lessons behind them. 
 They were welcome visitors, and Tolstoy's indebt- 
 edness to such men as Sutayeff, an uneducated 
 peasant, and Bondareff, a Siberian exile of the 
 same class, cannot be definitely estimated. There 
 were also numbers of men who, by the reading 
 of the New Testament, had come to strange 
 thoughts, which led them away from the 
 Church, and who, hearing of Tolstoy, clung to 
 him as the expression of their unexpressed ideas, 
 henceforth enrolling themselves among his 
 disciples. There are not a few of these among 
 Moscow's wealthy merchants; and Tolstoy's 
 friends always find his name an " Open sesame " 
 to their homes and their life's story. Among 
 these are such men as Petrovitsch, Vulganoff, 
 and Dunayeff, well-known bankers, all of them 
 splendid examples of a Christian manhood which 
 is as rare as it is beautiful. To the second class 
 belong the many who came, saw, and heard, and 
 returned to their homes with a new influence in 
 their lives but unable to sever themselves from 
 
 224 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 the wealth and culture they possessed, or the 
 society in which they moved. Among this class 
 must be named all the painters and sculptors for 
 whom he sat, and who could not loose themselves 
 from the wholesome spell which he cast over 
 them. Of these Ilya Repin, Ossip Pasternak, and 
 Prince Trubezkoy are the best examples. Their 
 homes and their lives are permeated by his spirit, 
 their art is influenced by his teachings, and they 
 are the disciples "who walk afar off." America 
 enrolls among this class Ernest Howard Crosby, 
 one of the best loved visitors to the Tolstoy home. 
 His worth can be best estimated by the fact that 
 he has been able to cast a halo over many other 
 American tourists who came, who were hard to 
 get rid of, who had much money, much tactless- 
 ness, and that perseverance which is not the 
 " perseverance of the saints." Jane Addams, of 
 the Hull House in Chicago, the best type of Amer- 
 ican womanhood that ever stepped into the Tol- 
 stoy home, came, carrying with her the fragrance 
 of her devoted life. In spite of the fact that 
 Tolstoy was then on the verge of a long illness, 
 and not in the best spirits, she had that delicate 
 perception which saw the genuine man and his 
 
 225 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 great and struggling soul. She was only a few 
 hours in Yasnaya Polyana, and her name may 
 have been lost in the long list of those who came 
 from all the corners of the earth, and who re- 
 turned blest, and henceforth to be a blessing. Of 
 these no record has been kept ; but after all they 
 may have been the best mediums for the spread- 
 ing of Tolstoy's ideals and the multiplying of the 
 divine life upon the earth. 
 
 To the third class are consigned all those who 
 place Tolstoy among the " things " which must 
 be " done while one is in Europe ; " the news- 
 paper reporters who magnified themselves and 
 their subject, and who searched for queerer 
 things than they found; the men and women 
 who called themselves "saviors of society," the 
 apostles of new dispensations who came to con- 
 vert Tolstoy to every possible and impossible 
 faith, and who returned disappointed because, 
 while they found him non-resistant, he was not 
 non-committal. All were welcomed, some more 
 cordially than others. Those who needed help, 
 and for whom help was good, received it ; and 
 most of them went away with the feeling " that 
 it was good for us to have been here," although 
 
 226 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 many mocked and ridiculed what they could not 
 understand. 
 
 The one element which more or less mars the 
 great impression one receives is the fact that 
 there are two worlds in one household, and that 
 the world in which Tolstoy lives is invaded at 
 every step, making it incomplete. His plain rooms 
 are joined by those of his family, almost luxuri- 
 ously furnished ; the frugal kasha (gruel) which 
 he eats is surrounded by omelettes and porter- 
 house steaks ; and this man who desires to be like 
 one of the commonest peasants sits at a table 
 served by white-gloved lackeys. He is poor, it is 
 true ; he has no money in his pockets, but his sons 
 have it. They married rich wives and enjoy " an 
 abundance of the things which men possess." 
 He does not accept money for his writings, he 
 throws them out into the world; but his wife 
 gathers them up, until the income from them 
 reaches into the tens of thousands. 
 
 Tolstoy cannot be blamed ; for he had no right 
 to force his family to live as he lived ; nor can 
 one blame Countess Tolstoy, upon whom the 
 burden of the family rested, who was- eager to 
 clothe and educate her children according to their 
 
 227 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 station in life, and who with much labor succeeded 
 in doing so. The matter did not pass into this 
 stage without a severe struggle, and that she 
 was the victor in it need not prove that it was 
 really the woman through whose fault Paradise 
 was lost. Yet every one feels the presence of 
 these two worlds, the one reserved, cautious, 
 pleasure-loving ; the other simple, generous, full 
 of labor and sorrow ; and if any chance guests 
 were asked in which world they would rather 
 spend the remainder of their days, most of them 
 would say : " In the world of labor and poverty." 
 There is a lesson in the contrast. One sees those 
 who are of the world, and close to them him 
 who is in their world but not of it ; and when one 
 goes away, he takes with him the full spiritual 
 charm of that peace which pervades in such 
 abundant measure the life of Tolstoy. 
 
 228 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE TEACHINGS OP TOLSTOY 
 
 IN the year 1883, Turgenieff, from Paris, where 
 he lay upon his deathbed, wrote to Tolstoy 
 imploring him to return to the art from which 
 he had fled to become a preacher of the Gos- 
 pel of Jesus, and a prophet of the Kingdom 
 of God. Turgenieff wrote : "I have not written 
 to you for a very long time because I have been 
 very ill, and am now lying on my deathbed. 
 I shall never recover ; I know that positively. I 
 write to you purposely to tell you how glad I am 
 to have been your contemporary, and to ask of 
 you the granting of a last wish. Do return to 
 your art. The gift you possess comes from the 
 same source from which all good things proceed. 
 How happy should I be if you would listen to me 
 and grant my request. My friend, great writer 
 of Russia, do listen to me ! Let me hear from 
 you when you receive this letter, ajid let me 
 embrace you and your family once more." 
 
 229 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 Neither the plea of the dying nor of the living 
 friends could persuade Tolstoy to take up his 
 pen for any other purpose than that of proclaim- 
 ing the truths he had discovered concerning 
 life, and doing it in a plain, straightforward 
 way, without the cover of fiction. He wrote now 
 as ever from within and of himself ; and in writ- 
 ing obeyed that ever-present desire for confes- 
 sion and self-examination, more than the desire 
 to impart knowledge to others. In his first 
 didactic book, "What is my Faith?" he de- 
 scribes how he has come to his faith in Jesus 
 and in that portion of the Gospels which he be- 
 lieves to have proceeded from the lips of Christ, 
 and which has revolutionized his own life, bring- 
 ing him peace and happiness. The center of his 
 faith and of the Christian religion he finds in 
 the Sermon on the Mount to which, he says, the 
 Church pays little heed, being too much occupied 
 in proclaiming fasts and feasts, and explaining 
 strange doctrines and dogmas. The doctrine of 
 non-resistance seems to him the most important, 
 and becomes the text of all the sermons which 
 he preaches to individuals, authorities, and na- 
 tions. Over and over again he says: "Force 
 
 230 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 must never be used, even in the suppression of 
 evil, and wrong can effectually be righted by 
 repaying evil with good." He discovered in the 
 Sermon on the Mount five laws which have be- 
 come his rule for faith and conduct, and which 
 he believes will bring the Kingdom of God into 
 ijien's hearts, and peace and happiness upon the 
 earth. The five laws he summarizes thus : 
 
 " Live at peace with all men and do not re- 
 gard any one as your inferior." 
 
 "Do not make the beauty of the body an 
 occasion for lust." 
 
 " Every man should have only one wife and 
 every woman only one husband, and they should 
 not be divorced for any reason." 
 
 " Do not revenge yourself and do not punish 
 because you think yourself insulted or hurt. 
 Suffer all wrong, and do not repay evil with 
 evil ; for you are all children of one Father." 
 
 "Never break the peace in the name of 
 patriotism." 
 
 These five laws, which overlap one another 
 and are not very clearly defined, represent the 
 great principles upon which Tolstoy would base 
 the new world order. To the question, how a 
 
 231 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 state or society can exist without the use of 
 force, he gives the following answer, which is 
 characteristic, inasmuch as it is the answer which 
 he always gives when one questions his theories. 
 "There can be no answer to such a question," 
 he says, " because the question is wrongly put. 
 We have nothing to do with the organization of 
 the state or of what we call society, but we have 
 everything to do with the question how person- 
 ally we have to act in the face of the ever-recur- 
 ring dilemmas ; whether we are to subordinate 
 our conscience to the conditions around us, or 
 whether we are to feel ourselves at one with a 
 state which hangs erring people to the gallows, 
 which commands soldiers to commit murder, and 
 poisons and demoralizes people with alcohol and 
 opium, or whether we are to subordinate our 
 actions to our conscience alone, so that conse- 
 quently we cannot have any part in the actions 
 of the government which offends our conscience. 
 What form the state will have, what results such 
 actions will bring, I do not know. I know only 
 that if I follow the promptings of a reasonable 
 love, the results cannot be evil ; just as nothing 
 evil can happen when the bee follows its higher 
 
 232 
 
TOLSTOY, THE MAN 
 
 instincts and goes with the swarm to its de- 
 struction. Herein is the power of the teachings 
 of Jesus : that they bring one from a condition of 
 doubt to a position of absolute certainty. I wish 
 to repeat it," he says, " the question is not, What 
 form of government is the safest ? but the one 
 question for every man, and a question which one 
 cannot avoid, is whether a good and reasonable 
 being who has come into the world for a brief 
 moment and at any moment may disappear from 
 it, whether he can be a party to the killing of 
 erring people, or to the killing of all people with- 
 out exception, who belong to a different race or 
 nation and whom he calls enemies. There can be 
 only one answer to the question, What the con- 
 sequences will be. I answer, only good ; for only 
 good can come if we act according to the high- 
 est known laws, according to conscience and 
 love." If one replies that to live according to 
 these laws one has to suffer, he says : "And don't 
 they suffer here, who do not live according to 
 these laws? Just walk through the streets of 
 your cities and see these pale, emaciated crea- 
 tures who struggle for their daily bread. They 
 have left house and home, wife and children for 
 
 233 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 the sake of a living, and yet they are not satis- 
 fied; neither the poor devil with his hundred 
 rubles, nor the rich man with his hundred thou- 
 sand rubles. These are the true sufferers. They 
 lack all conditions of happiness. They lack first 
 of all the touch with nature ; they never see the 
 sun rise; they see forest and field only from 
 their carriages ; they have never sown anything, 
 and like the prisoners who find comfort in a 
 spider or a mouse, so these people find comfort 
 in parrots, dogs, monkeys, or sickly plants, which 
 often they do not even attend to themselves. 
 Secondly, they lack that happiness which labor 
 brings ; first, pleasant and voluntary labor, and 
 then physical labor which brings sound sleep and 
 a good appetite. All the unhappy ones of earth, 
 dignitaries and millionaires, like prisoners have 
 no work; and they struggle against diseases 
 which are a result of this lack. Only such labor as 
 is useful and pleasant makes happiness ; and as 
 these people need nothing, their labor is always 
 distasteful to them ; for I have never known one 
 who praised his work, or did it with the zest 
 with which a porter shovels snow from the side- 
 walk. The third condition of happiness which 
 
 234 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 they lack is the family. Most of the worldly 
 minded are adulterers ; and where this is not the 
 case children become to them a burden rather 
 than a pleasure. If they care for them they do 
 not associate with them. They are left in charge 
 of strangers ; first, foreign governesses and 
 tutors, and then the officials in the schools ; con- 
 sequently they have from their children only sor- 
 row; that is, they have children who are just 
 as unhappy as they are, and who have only one 
 feeling towards their parents ; namely, the wish 
 that they may soon die, so that they may in- 
 herit their wealth. They lack the fourth con- 
 dition of happiness ; the loving association with 
 people of all stations and conditions; for the 
 higher a man rises in life, the narrower grows 
 the circle with which acquaintance is possible. 
 The peasant may associate with the whole world, 
 and if 1,000,000 people refuse to associate with 
 him there are still left 80,000,000 who live and 
 work just as he does and with whom he may 
 come into immediate relationship, whether they 
 live in Archangel or Astrachan ; and he need 
 not wait for an introduction, or make formal 
 calls. The fifth condition of happiness which 
 
 235 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 they lack is health and a painless death ; and the 
 higher the social standing the more do they lack 
 uiese conditions. Take the average well-to-do 
 man and his wife," Tolstoy continues, " and take 
 a peasant and his wife and compare them, and 
 you will find that in spite of the hunger which 
 the peasants endure, and the cruelly hard work 
 which they have to do, they are usually the 
 healthier. Call to mind the majority of rich men 
 and their wives, and you will find that the 
 greater number is ill. Think how most of your 
 rich acquaintances have died one after the other 
 of some loathsome or terrible disease. They ruin 
 themselves for the sake of the teachings of this 
 world, and countless men and women follow 
 them, living the same cruel life and dying the 
 same painful death. And shall we not go, when 
 Christ calls, to the obedience of his law ? " To 
 the criticism that his teaching would immedi- 
 ately result in poverty, he replies : "Yes indeed, 
 but what does it mean to be poor ? To be poor 
 means not to live in the city, but in the country ; 
 not to be locked up in a room, but to be at work 
 in field or forest ; to rejoice in the beauty of the 
 sky and the warmth of the sun. To be poor 
 
 236 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 means to be hungry three times a day, to sleep 
 restf ully instead of having insomnia ; it means 
 to have children and to train them yourself ; it 
 means to be able to associate with most men ; and 
 above all it means not to have to do that which 
 is distasteful to you, and not to fear what is to 
 happen. Jesus said : ' The laborer is worthy of his 
 hire,' and he who works will get enough to eat. 
 Moreover, we are not in the world to be served 
 but to be of service to others. Thus the true 
 happiness and the true wealth will come if we 
 obey the law of Jesus." 
 
 Two purely theological works follow this con- 
 fession of his faith. One of them is a "Critique 
 of Dogmatic Theology," and the other a trans- 
 lation of the four Gospels, which he has woven 
 into one. In the first work it is the theology of 
 the Greek Church that he makes the target 
 of an unusually sharp and bitter attack. He 
 says : " It grows clearer to me every day that for 
 some reason it seemed necessary, at the expense 
 of healthful reasoning, and the laws of logic 
 and of conscience, to reduce God to a low, half- 
 heathenish conception. . . . The whole teaching 
 of that church is not only false, but a lie and a 
 
 237 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 deception, which for centuries has been built up 
 for certain base purposes." He closes the book 
 very sarcastically, citing the last sentence from 
 the " Simple Theology " of the Church, where it 
 teaches that "He who rules the universe has 
 appointed the earthly rulers, and has given them 
 dominion and power for the well-being of the 
 people ; moreover, that God through these rulers 
 appoints all lower officials," and this sentence 
 ends in an admonition " to be regular and faith- 
 ful in the payment of taxes and ti things." To 
 this Tolstoy adds these words : " With this moral 
 application of Christian dogma, ends the ' Sim- 
 ple Theology/ ' In a later work upon a similar 
 subject, he is more outspoken, and characterizes 
 theology as "An infamous tool of politics." The 
 relation of theology and politics, or of the church 
 and state, he describes thus : " Rome was, at the 
 time of the rise of Christianity, a nest of thieves 
 which enlarged itself constantly by robbery, and 
 which subjected other nations by force and mur- 
 der. These robbers with their leaders, who were 
 now called Caesar and now Augustus, plundered 
 and murdered people in order to satisfy their 
 fickle desires. One of the heirs of these robber 
 
 238 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 chiefs, Constantine, came to the conclusion that 
 certain Christian doctrines were preferable to 
 his own ; perhaps the following : ' You know that 
 the princes of this world have dominion over 
 them, but it shall not be so with you/ ' Thou 
 shalt not kill, thou shalt not commit adultery, 
 thou shalt gather treasures upon the earth, judge 
 not, resist not the evil/ Some one must have 
 told Constantine something like this : ' You want 
 to call yourself a Christian, and at the same 
 time disobey these laws, continue to be a robber 
 chief, to go to war, to live in luxury, and to kill. 
 Well, all that can be reconciled/ So the Chris- 
 tians blessed Constantine and praised his power 
 and influence, they declared him the chosen of 
 God, and anointed him with holy oil. As often 
 as a rascal succeeded in robbing, plundering and 
 killing thousands of people who never did him 
 any harm, they anointed him with holy oil ; for 
 of course this was a man of God. As often as 
 one of these ' anointed of the Lord ' had the de- 
 sire to beat his own or a strange people, the 
 Church prepared holy water for him. They 
 sprinkled with it the cross, that cross which 
 Christ carried and on which he died because he 
 
 239 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 resolutely condemned these murderers, the 
 priests took it into their hands, blessed this man 
 and then sent him out to murder and to hang in 
 the name of the crucified Christ." Tolstoy is gen- 
 erous enough to say that the priests were cor- 
 rupted by these robber politicians, and that only 
 later did they become conscious and professional 
 deceivers. The relation of church and state he 
 defines thus : " The words ' Christian State ' have 
 about as much meaning as 'hot ice/ or 'glowing 
 ice/ ' ' There is to him only one alternative : 
 " Either there is no Christianity or there is no 
 State." 
 
 Thus Tolstoy proves himself an anarchist, 
 and he does not hesitate to call himself one. 
 " Do not be afraid of that word," he said to the 
 writer, "I am such an anarchist as the early 
 Christians were ; I am such an anarchist as the 
 words of Jesus have made me, and by-and-by 
 we shall become accustomed to the true meaning 
 of that word. The man who is born again needs 
 no civil or military authority, and it can have 
 no power over him." Little as Tolstoy's Chris- 
 tian anarchy can have any relation to the ordi- 
 nary state, just so little relation has it to what 
 
 240 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 we understand by anarchy, which we define as 
 "A system which teaches that an ideal condition 
 of society can be brought about by revolutionary 
 force." Neither is it in any way related to mod- 
 ern socialism, whose theorizing he considers as 
 false as the conclusions which it draws. The 
 ideal society which Tolstoy preaches cannot be 
 brought about by any of these agencies, but 
 rather by the influence of those individuals who 
 live according to the law of Jesus. 
 
 His translation of the Gospels is accompanied 
 by quotations from Russian and foreign com- 
 mentators, with whom he discusses the meaning 
 of the text. Beside the Greek text, he printed 
 the Russian translation, and finally his own ; 
 always stating the reason for his deviation from 
 the Russian. This large work he condensed into a 
 smaller one, leaving out his comments and those 
 of the commentators. Arbitrarily he divides the 
 Gospels into twelve parts, and he proves his divi- 
 sion by citations from the words of Jesus. Each 
 chapter is headed by a quotation from the Lord's 
 Prayer, which is the briefest expression of what 
 Jesus meant to convey by the words which fol- 
 low. He has left out most of the miracles as well 
 
 241 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 as everything which was not quite clear to him ; 
 and the following narrative of the sick man at 
 the pool of Bethesda, characterizes his whole 
 treatment of the Gospel story. " In Jerusalem 
 there was a bath, and a sick man was lying 
 there without making an effort, expecting to 
 be healed by a miracle. Jesus stepped up to the 
 sick man and said: 'Do not expect healing 
 through a miracle, but live according to the 
 strength which is in you and do not deceive 
 yourself about the meaning of life.' The sick 
 man obeyed Jesus, arose and went away." In 
 spite of many such liberties with the text, the 
 work startles one by its ingenious compilation 
 as well as by the skill with which Tolstoy makes 
 the words of Jesus conform to his ideas. The 
 best known among his didactic works he calls, 
 " What shall we do then ? " Only small portions 
 of it have been printed in Russia, and abroad it 
 has appeared in a somewhat incomplete and mu- 
 tilated form. After having been away from the 
 city for more than eighteen years, he tells of 
 his first touch with its life, and especially with 
 that part of it which hides itself in the cellars 
 of Moscow and in its wretched asylums and 
 
 242 
 
I 
 
 TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 slums. He came in close touch with it during 
 his services as a census enumerator ; a work 
 which he undertook in order to be able to make 
 investigations in regard to the prevailing pov- 
 erty, and to find ways and means for its preven- 
 tion and relief. He tells how he came to one of 
 the most wretched of these places, the Rhasonoff 
 Asylum. Something very wonderful happened 
 to him there. He had taken money with him 
 and could not rid himself of it, although he had 
 brought it with him for that purpose. " For," 
 he says, "I met there in those cellars people 
 whom I could not help because they were used 
 to hardship and labor and had a stronger grasp 
 upon life than I had. Again I met others whom 
 I could not help because they were just such peo- 
 ple as I was. The majority of the unfortunates 
 were unfortunate merely because they had lost 
 the ability and the desire to earn their daily 
 bread ; that is, their misfortune consisted in the 
 fact that they were just as I was. Real suffer- 
 ing was relieved in these places by their own 
 comrades, better than I could have relieved it. 
 Money could make none of them happy." He 
 comes to the conclusion that poverty can be 
 
 243 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 stopped only as one goes to the root of the 
 evil ; and the evil is our whole social fabric. 
 "What shall we do then?" he asks. "Do just 
 what Jesus and John the Baptist told us to do. 
 Give up everything which we do not abso- 
 lutely need, and adjust our lives so that we will 
 have to take as little as possible of labor and 
 strength from others. There is no such thing," 
 he says, " as a privileged idle class, although we 
 have been trying to prove that the division of 
 labor necessitates that some shall paint and 
 think while others perspire and labor. We call 
 painting and thinking, art and science ; but art 
 is art only as it conveys to men the highest idea 
 of life and salvation, and science is truly science 
 only as it teaches men what is their object in 
 life and what their destiny. We call that, con- 
 temptuously, religion; but it is the only true 
 science. Counting invisible bugs and stars, look- 
 ing for sun-spots and moon channels, and add- 
 ing to it an ' ology/ does not make a true science ; 
 and upon such science and such art we cannot 
 base our unjust social division." He insists 
 that the so-called scientists misunderstand Chris- 
 tianity, that they judge it from the distorted 
 
 244 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 faith of the churches, and that they take less 
 trouble to probe for the genuine faith than they 
 do to search for the history of the pollywog. 
 "What shall we do then?" he asks again; and 
 answers : " Let us not deceive ourselves as to the 
 meaning of life ; and as soon as we realize that 
 we are upon the wrong path, turn about and 
 walk upon the narrow one. Secondly, let us not 
 believe that we are better than others; and, 
 lastly, let us work with all our might physically, 
 and struggle with the forces of nature for the 
 maintenance of our own lives and the lives of 
 others." 
 
 " What is the purpose of life ? " he asks in a 
 book which is as didactic as the others, but much 
 more sweet-spirited ; and he gives the answer in 
 one sentence : " The whole aim of life is self- 
 sacrificing labor for others." 
 
 That Christianity is not a mystical religion 
 but a new philosophy of life, he declares, and 
 proves in his most important work of this kind, 
 " The Kingdom of God is within you." It is an 
 enlargement of his first work, " Confession of 
 Faith," and here he searchingly reviews all his 
 teachings, and tries to prove them. He points to 
 
 245 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 the Church as the enemy and perverter of Chris- 
 tianity, and warns men not to judge it by that 
 institution, meaning primarily the Greek Russian 
 Church. 
 
 There are, according to Tolstoy, three ways 
 of looking at life. The first and oldest is the in- 
 dividual or animal, which considers the pre- 
 servation and well-being of the self, regardless 
 of the consequences to others. All the heathen 
 religions in their perverted forms teach this, as 
 do also Buddhism, Mohammedanism, and even 
 Christianity. He considers this stage the child- 
 hood of the religious consciousness. The second 
 view of the aim of life consists, not in the well- 
 being of the individual, but in that of a number 
 of individuals such as the family, a tribe, a 
 nation, a state, or humanity as a whole. From 
 this view have developed all patriarchal and 
 social religious faiths ; such as the Chinese, the 
 Japanese, the Jewish, the state religion of the Ro- 
 mans, and our own state religion as well as the 
 so-called humanitarian religions like the Positiv- 
 ists. " The third view, which is represented by 
 Tolstoy, and over and over emphasized in his 
 teachings, is, that the purpose of life is not in the 
 
 246 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 attaining of the well-being of the individual, or of 
 any class or number of individuals, but to express 
 and to serve that divine will which has called 
 forth the whole earth ; or, as he states it less tech- 
 nically, " It is the business of every man ' to do 
 the will of Him that sent me into the world/ " 
 
 Humanity, he claims, has passed through the 
 first two stages, and now is the time to begin 
 the fulfillment of the third, which begins by ac- 
 cepting the law of Jesus. To the criticism that 
 this ideal is unattainable he answers that " it is 
 our business to try, and that in trying there will 
 be an increase of the well-being of all. The 
 time will come," he says, "when what seems to 
 us impossible and visionary, will be perfectly 
 natural and easy to realize. The world is now 
 suffering from the discord between conscience 
 and action. We still rule over men, and consider 
 them our menials and servants, in spite of the 
 fact that our conscience tells us that all men are 
 equal. We obey laws which are human, imper- 
 fect, and unjust, we go to war and murder men, 
 we smother conscience by narcotics and luxuries, 
 by music, art, theatres, smoke, and alcohol. No- 
 thing can save us from this inconsistency and 
 
 247 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 struggle but the Christian faith as expressed in 
 the law of Jesus." 
 
 This constant attack upon our view of the aim 
 of life has not remained without its effect upon 
 individuals of all classes, and has reached from 
 the mujik's cabin to the throne of the august 
 czar. The proposal of the Hague Conference for 
 the settlement of international difficulties, which 
 emanated from the czar, is one of the tangible 
 results of Tolstoy's ungentle and insistent teach- 
 ing. Another result is a deeper look into the 
 meaning of the Gospels on the part of the Church 
 authorities in Russia ; a more humane treatment 
 of prisoners and a greater philanthropic activity 
 among the rich in the cities of Russia ; the last 
 improvement being due largely to Tolstoy's con- 
 demnation of wealth, its use and abuse. 
 
 Again let me say that his teachings come from 
 within the man as they have been borne in upon 
 him from what he thinks is the will of God and 
 what he sees of the suffering of men. He felt 
 the great contrasts which in Russian cities are 
 stronger than elsewhere ; he saw flaunting lux- 
 ury and pitiable poverty side by side, and he 
 cried out against such conditions, which are in 
 
 248 
 
Photograph by M. Duumpilbr 
 
 COUNT TOLSTOY AND HIS DISCIPLE AND FOLLOWER 
 THERKOW 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 discord with the will of a loving God. No one 
 will ever know how these harsh sayings of his 
 were born out of love for man, for the common 
 man ; the suffering and patient mujik who sup- 
 ports a vast state by his labor, receiving in re- 
 turn scorn and abuse, and enduring hunger and 
 cold. Tolstoy has idealized the common man ; but 
 no more than has the Master who held up a little 
 child as a model to pattern after, and the self- 
 sacrificing gift of an outcast woman as the most 
 fragrant of offerings ; passing by kings and priests, 
 to call the fishermen of Galilee to be his apostles 
 and disciples. Tolstoy dignifies labor, physical 
 labor, and calls all of us who live by our brains, 
 " social parasites." He may be wrong ; but after 
 all has been said, it remains true that the man 
 who gives, in exchange for the bread he gets, the 
 exertion of his muscle and the sweat of his brow, 
 is the most honest man. In a country like Russia, 
 where to live off the state is the business of a 
 good third of its population, and where common 
 labor and the common laborer are regarded as 
 both " common and unclean," his condemnation 
 may be a just one if not always temperate. 
 He exalts the words of Jesus, and condemns 
 249 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 the Church which has made of a religion, pure, 
 lofty, and spiritual, one of signs, wonders, idols, 
 and forms. Neither is the exaltation too high or 
 the condemnation too severe. The words of Jesus 
 are life, while the mumbled words of Russian 
 priests are like the enchantments of sorcerers 
 and soothsayers, and have deadened the spiritual 
 life of their adherents. Tolstoy does not claim 
 that his teachings are original. "If they were 
 original," he said to the writer, " they would not 
 be true." The truth he teaches is as old as all 
 truth ; it was born in the bosom of God before 
 the world was, and brought to light and into life 
 by Jesus Christ. Nor are Tolstoy's teachings pro- 
 found ; he means to be so simple that a child 
 can understand, and it is his desire for sim- 
 plicity, that garb of truth, which made him for- 
 sake an art into whose atmosphere he was born, 
 which wooed him in his youth, which, in middle 
 age brought him far-reaching fame, and in the 
 winter of his life never-fading laurels. He 
 shrank from nobody and from nothing when he 
 felt it his duty to say just what he thought to be 
 the truth, and what he knew to be the will of God ; 
 for he had not only the teacher's insight into truth, 
 
 250 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 but also the prophet's courage and the seer's 
 vision of God. The Czar's throne was not so high 
 to him as the throne of God, the Metropolitan of 
 Moscow not so sacred as his divine Master. Both 
 were condemned, and were called murderers and 
 idolaters. He was excommunicated, and he would 
 have been imprisoned or exiled if these powers 
 had not realized that he was not fighting with 
 carnal weapons, and that they could not defeat or 
 silence him by chains or dungeon walls. It is a 
 case where a man has proved true the words of 
 the prophets, and the common teaching of his- 
 tory, that " Out of the mouth of babes and suck- 
 lings," and not out of the mouths of mighty guns, 
 or mightier kings, "Hath he ordained strength." 
 Tolstoy has opposed the hard and cold dogma- 
 tism of the church, and has put into its place the 
 reasonable and broad teaching of Jesus. He de- 
 nies the existence of a God who is man-made, 
 whimsical, autocratic, and arbitrary, and believes 
 in a God who has revealed himself in love and 
 law, and who permeates all things. He denies 
 the efficacy of punishment in the redemption of 
 men, and the use of force in maintaining or de- 
 fending states, nations, or society ; and teaches 
 
 251 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 that men who voluntarily obey the law of Jesus, 
 will alone bring the Kingdom of God upon the 
 earth and establish it. He denies that patriot- 
 ism is a virtue, and that killing men in battle is 
 not murder ; he teaches that all men, of what- 
 ever race or color, are brothers, and that the 
 law of Jesus which bids us to love all men must 
 be obeyed, rather than the dictates of earthly 
 authorities, which force us to carry arms and 
 use them either in the defense of old, or in the 
 acquisition of new territory. Neither hate nor 
 vengeance should have a place in human hearts, 
 he says ; and men will be redeemed, and society 
 redeemed, only by the divine pity and loving 
 forgiveness. 
 
 Whether he be right or wrong, he is so sure 
 of being right that he has placed his whole life 
 in the balance; believing that he knows the 
 truth, and that it is the truth of which Jesus 
 said : "It shall make men free." 
 
 252 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE MISUNDERSTOOD TOLSTOY 
 
 DURING the winter of 1903, while recovering 
 from a severe illness, Tolstoy received a letter 
 from an English friend, calling his attention to 
 the fact that Louise of Tuscany, the divorced 
 wife of the Crown Prince of Saxony, had excused 
 her action in leaving her husband and children 
 by saying that Tolstoy, through his teachings 
 about matrimony, had encouraged her deplorable 
 action. This letter, which he answered in a some- 
 what ungentle spirit, a fact which he afterwards 
 greatly regretted, pained him very much ; for he, 
 in common with all great teachers, was realizing 
 that many of his precepts, although he tried to 
 make them very plain, had not only been misun- 
 derstood but also misapplied. Especially was this 
 true in regard to that very subject of marriage ; 
 a relation which he maintained purely and 
 sacredly, and against whose abuse and misuse, 
 particularly in the higher circles, he had lifted up 
 
 253 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 his voice. The " Kreutzer Sonata," the book in 
 which he presents his views of matrimony among 
 certain classes, created a great sensation in Rus- 
 sia and out of it, and is certainly the most mis- 
 understood, and consequently the most unfor- 
 tunate of his writings. His idea of literature, 
 which made him write so plainly that "he who 
 runs may read," has had just the opposite effect 
 from what he intended ; for they who ran away, 
 misread and misunderstood him, and made him 
 the apostle of libertinism. Although he tried to 
 prove that without a true view of life, and with- 
 out noble ideals, even matrimony may become 
 immoral, many, if not most people understood 
 him to mean that matrimony is no better than 
 concubinage, or, perhaps more correctly speaking, 
 that concubinage is as good as matrimony. He 
 tried to show that marriage does not save a man 
 from committing adultery, even with his own 
 wife ; but men and women understood him to say 
 that there may be unlawful relations between 
 the sexes without committing adultery. His own 
 view of marriage he expressed to the writer in 
 these words : " Marriage is an elevation for such 
 as we." He considers that much which happens 
 
 254 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 in the married life is a lowering of that state, 
 which he does not consider the ideal one, but natu- 
 ral and sacred. Basing his views upon the words 
 of Jesus in Matt. v. 28, and xix. 11, 12, he con- 
 siders the single life the ideal one, even if so the 
 whole human race ceases to exist. Upon no other 
 point does one meet so many criticisms and con- 
 demnations of Tolstoy and his views as upon this 
 one ; and he is especially censured for not living 
 according to what he teaches to be the ideal mar- 
 ried state. While he would not defend himself 
 against these, one can truthfully say that as soon 
 as he had light upon the subject he took what he 
 considers the first steps leading to the ideal ; steps 
 which he believes it possible and essential for 
 every man to take. The first one, "purity before 
 marriage," he did not attain because it was never 
 held up to him as an ideal ; adultery in the single 
 state with a lewd or a married woman being not 
 only uncondemned but encouraged. Tolstoy con- 
 fesses his unconscious sin in this, and has long be- 
 lieved that impure relations, at any time and in 
 any state, are absolutely sinful and against the law 
 of Jesus. He says that the second attainable step 
 is "the maintenance of the married state with 
 
 255 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 one woman." He has met this requirement in 
 the face of a society which encouraged the covet- 
 ing of another man's wife, and where the tempta- 
 tions to break this law were many and great, both 
 from without and from within. No one will 
 question the fact that he has been faithful to his 
 wife, giving her his fullest devotion and purest 
 love. The children who were born to him were 
 not unwelcome to Countess Tolstoy, in whom the 
 mother spirit is remarkably developed, and who 
 believes with her husband that the aim of mar- 
 riage should be to give to the world well-born and 
 well-trained children. She believes with him that 
 the children should not be given over to the care 
 of strangers ; she has nursed all but one of them 
 herself, and was much grieved that she could not 
 be to this child a mother in the fullest sense. 
 Tolstoy also believes that it is wrong for a wo- 
 man to use her physical charms to attract men 
 to herself, and he therefore condemns many of 
 the usages of polite society. In the " Kreutzer 
 Sonata," he means to show to young people, first, 
 the evil of sensual passion ; and, secondly, how 
 the married life may be debased by that passion. 
 He does this with his usual candor, thus making 
 
 256 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 the story exceedingly naturalistic, and conse- 
 quently unpleasant ; perhaps unwholesome ; but 
 he certainly is not and does not wish to be im- 
 pure. 
 
 Nor does he attack the family ; on the contrary, 
 he has always been its strongest champion, and 
 intends to be that in this much misunderstood 
 book. The story is told by one Posnyscheff to his 
 traveling companion in the railroad car. It is the 
 sad history of his courtship and marriage and 
 their unhappy ending. He had tasted life after 
 the manner of young men, and was finally lured 
 into matrimony by a designing young girl who 
 used her physical charms to great advantage. 
 They were married, but never knew real happi- 
 ness, because they were drawn toward each 
 other by only the lowest desires, and were quickly 
 separated when these desires were satisfied. 
 Their children were unwelcome, and were not 
 trained by the parents, but left to the care of 
 hirelings. A musician, who came into the house 
 as a friend, charmed the wife by his good looks, 
 but more by his playing on the violin, and at last 
 by his ardent professions of love. The jealousy 
 in Posnyscheff 's breast grew from suspicion into 
 
 257 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 madness ; and one night, returning from a jour- 
 ney (which he had undertaken solely to be able 
 to surprise his wife with her paramour), he killed 
 him, was imprisoned, and had time to repent of 
 his deed as well as of matrimony. He was con- 
 vinced that, if he had had as much light upon the 
 subject before as he had then, he would never 
 have married ; and he realized that Christ's words, 
 " Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after 
 her," have their bearing not only upon the wife 
 of another man, but upon one's own wife also. 
 Tolstoy does not prove by this story that matri- 
 mony is a failure, but that the men and women 
 who enter it without the highest ideals before 
 them, make a failure of it, and are no better, and 
 sometimes worse, after they are married, than 
 they were before. 
 
 Countess Tolstoy and her children were not 
 pleased by the book, because it was natural that 
 the public should in some way try to connect the 
 story with the author's life, which, in other cases, 
 it was quite justified in doing. Tolstoy is anything 
 but unhappy in his married life, and Countess 
 Tolstoy anything but an impure woman ; never- 
 theless, he writes out of his own experience when 
 
 258 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 he speaks of the base effects of passion upon the 
 higher life. He entered the married state as he 
 would have entered Paradise ; and he deplored 
 the fact that he brought into it so much which 
 defiled and destroyed its sacredness as well as its 
 purity. In the " Kreutzer Sonata " he did not say 
 all he wished to upon this subject, although many 
 people think he said too much. However that 
 may be, it must be remembered that everything 
 he did say he said seriously, and with the simple 
 desire to tell the truth as he saw it, and was try- 
 ing to live it. He certainly did not give any en- 
 couragement to the libertine, or the free-lover, 
 or any of those sentimentalists whose soaring 
 emotions may be only the stirring of the baser 
 passions. He believes in the marriage of the 
 heart ; by which he means that marriage which 
 so unites two souls that no power on earth can 
 separate them. None of those men and women 
 who have broken the chains of wedlock, and have 
 run away from its responsibilities, no matter how 
 galling and heavy they have been, can find a sylla- 
 ble in all his teachings to encourage them. His 
 standard for the married life is the standard of 
 Jesus, as he interprets it, and is much higher than 
 
 259 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 that of the state and of most of the churches. He 
 would condemn the action of those who break the 
 marriage vow, if he did not believe the words of 
 his Teacher : " Judge not, that ye be not judged." 
 It is the fashion to sneer at Tolstoy's theory 
 of the higher wedded life, because his wife has 
 borne him thirteen children ; but if they were born 
 out of a pure love, as we have every reason to 
 believe that they were, he has fulfilled the first 
 condition which he has marked out as one of 
 the steps towards his ideal. Perhaps he felt the 
 non-married state to be the perfect one, because 
 in it one can more easily live as he himself de- 
 sired to live. " Happy man ! " he said of a con- 
 firmed old bachelor ; " he can live without hurting 
 anybody." Marriage and the children have kept 
 Tolstoy from making of himself the completest 
 sacrifice, and testing to its extreme the truth of 
 the law of Jesus. He still thinks the martyr's 
 death desirable, and now, with neither wife nor 
 children dependent upon him, he would deem it 
 his greatest joy to suffer thus. He did consider 
 his family, he had to in order to be consistent ; 
 for he could not force any one to live as he 
 wished to live. His ideal undesirable, or un- 
 
 260 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 attainable, as it is has this advantage, that the 
 steps which he marks out toward reaching it are 
 both desirable and possible, and are the greatest 
 need of our modern society. 
 
 Tolstoy's attitude toward women lacks all 
 the sentimentality by which he surrounds the 
 peasant. He is a realist in their portraiture, 
 although it never lacks the human touch which 
 he gives to everything. The " woman question," 
 as such, has no place in his social problems, be- 
 cause under the law of Jesus " there is neither 
 male nor female ;" the least is as the highest, and 
 every one is a servant to his fellow men. Upon 
 women in the new spheres of activity, he looks 
 with the same disapproval as upon men in similar 
 positions ; contending that those occupations are 
 unwholesome and unnecessary. 
 
 Another matter upon which he has been mis- 
 understood is his view of art. In the " Kreutzer 
 Sonata," and later, in his "What is Art?" he 
 attacks the sensuality of art, but not art itself, 
 which he loves in all its forms. All through his 
 life he has felt its seductive power, and its abil- 
 ity to be made a tool for the lowest instincts ; 
 its capability of filling a man's soul until there 
 
 261 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 is room for nothing else, and the possibility of 
 its becoming his prayer, temple, and divinity. 
 He also attacks its exclusiveness, its expensive- 
 ness, and its lack of usefulness in the service of 
 the Master. The art in which he believes must 
 be able to convey the highest emotions to those 
 who come in contact with it ; these feelings must 
 not be superficial, base, or vague, and they must 
 serve to bring men into harmony one with an- 
 other. Art must be simple in form and clear in 
 expression ; so that it needs no commentary or 
 interpreter. It must be the instrument which 
 conveys moral and religious truth from the realm 
 of the mind to that of the heart, and must 
 bring men in touch with the higher life. By this 
 standard he condemns the music of Wagner, 
 Beethoven's "Ninth Symphony," and Goethe's 
 "Faust" ; approving the folk-song of the peasant, 
 the Old Testament stories, Schiller's youthful 
 tragedy "The Robbers," Victor Hugo's "Les 
 Miserables," Dickens's novels as a whole, Harriet 
 Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin," and many 
 others of the same class. Just as honestly as he 
 has dealt with his life and condemned it in the 
 light of the truth which he found later, just so 
 
 262 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 he condemns the art which he produced that 
 has not these standards ; and as he has changed 
 his method of living, he has also changed his aim 
 and method as an artist. 
 
 It is not such a barren world into which he 
 has escaped and would have the believers in 
 Christ's law to follow. His own home, Yasnaya 
 Polyana, is full of music, not always that which 
 he desires ; but men and women bring to him 
 the best they have, and he enjoys all that finds 
 its way to his heart. The silent rooms have often 
 been filled by the sweet, pure notes of Mozart, 
 his favorite composer, whose masterpieces he 
 plays himself, with the feeling and touch of an 
 artist. Whenever Tolstoy came to Moscow, he 
 could be found, on Sundays and feast-days, in 
 the " Maiden Field," the pleasure-ground of the 
 common people, whose unbounded delight he 
 shared, and in the natural outpouring of whose 
 simple art he found the type for its highest 
 expression. During these winters he often 
 attended the concerts of the Symphony Or- 
 chestra, given in the magnificent rooms of the 
 "Aristocratic Club," and he never hesitated to 
 acknowledge himself fearfully bored ; especially 
 
 263 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 if Wagner dominated the programme, as has 
 frequently happened in late years. Although his 
 own room is devoid of ornament, pictures and 
 sculpture are not banished from his home, 
 and he looks at both in unfeigned enjoyment. 
 Painters and sculptors belong to the circle of 
 his most intimate friends ; they bring the pro- 
 duct of chisel and brush for his approval, and 
 his criticisms are always listened to reverently, 
 although they are not always accepted. 
 
 Nearly everything which the world prints 
 finds its way to his study, and he reads much, 
 or has the substance of the books told to him, 
 by some member of his family. Towards the 
 new Russian literature he does not feel very 
 sympathetic, although it was inspired by him. 
 He deplores its sensuality and its aimlessness, 
 but above all, its lack of truthfulness. And this 
 is after all his greatest test of art : Is it true ? 
 Does it truthfully reflect what men feel, think, 
 and do, or what they ought to feel, think, and do? 
 The form of art is of little importance to him ; 
 it must be sacrificed to truth. For this reason 
 he prefers prose to poetry, without, however, 
 remaining untouched by the true masterpieces 
 
 264 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 of verse. The writer has seen him moved to 
 tears by the recital of the simple Russian poetry, 
 and has also seen him enter sympathetically into 
 the intricate art of Browning. He himself says 
 upon this subject : " An author is of value and of 
 use to us in the measure in which he reveals to 
 us the inner processes of his soul. Whatever he 
 writes, be it a drama, a learned thesis, a philo- 
 sophical discussion, a criticism, or a satire, it is 
 the revelation of the labor of his soul which is 
 valuable, and not the architectural form by which 
 he reveals it, or very often tries to conceal it." 
 Toward the stage he never felt very sympa- 
 thetic. In his younger years, when he lived a 
 life of pleasure, the play was only one of the 
 means of making it more enjoyable ; but later, 
 life as it was seemed tragic enough, without 
 needing an expensive, and what he thought an 
 immoral institution to represent it. Very sar- 
 castically he describes a rehearsal which he at- 
 tended somewhere, and which served to separate 
 him still more widely from the stage. He says : 
 " It seems impossible to view a more disgusting 
 spectacle than this. Everywhere there were work- 
 ingmen, dirty, tired, and in bad humor. On the 
 
 265 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 stage were hundreds of painted and strangely 
 garbed men and scantily dressed women. In 
 the opera which they rehearsed there came a 
 procession of Hindoos escorting a bride. She was 
 led by an individual dressed like a Turk, who 
 opened his mouth in a strange way, and sang : 
 'I lead the bride, I lead the bride/ Things 
 never seemed to run smoothly ; sometimes the 
 Hindoos with their spears came too late, some- 
 times too soon; seldom in time. Then some- 
 thing happened which made the director swear 
 like a cab-driver. Over and over again the Turk 
 sang : ' I lead the bride/ Once more the Hin- 
 doos came, with their glittering spears, and again 
 things were not right, and again there were 
 curses, and again the Turk began : 'I lead the 
 bride/ Such a rehearsal lasts five or six hours ; 
 the beating with a cane, the repetitions, the cor- 
 rections of singers and orchestra, the processions 
 and dances, all of it is well seasoned by terrible 
 oaths. Forty times, at least, I heard the words 
 donkey, fool, idiot, and hag, which were applied 
 to singers and musicians alike ; and all of them 
 listened patiently, and marched again and again, 
 and danced over and over, and the Turk sang 
 
 266 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 for the fortieth time, 'I lead the bride/ The 
 director knows that these people are so ruined 
 that they are not fit for any other thing but to 
 blow a horn or to march over the stage like 
 fools, scantily dressed, with spears and yellow 
 slippers ; but he also knows that they enjoy this 
 lazy life, and would rather bear anything than 
 to leave it, and seek a more honest way of mak- 
 ing a living." Not a much less repulsive feeling 
 was engendered in Tolstoy when listening to one 
 of Wagner's operas ; and he went away vowing 
 not to attend another performance. He was 
 nearly sixty years of age when he began to re- 
 alize that he might use the stage for the con- 
 veyance of his teachings. Especially during the 
 now of ten repeated attacks of illness did he seri- 
 ously think of writing a drama. He saw the char- 
 acters acting the play before him ; and, judging 
 from the production, it must have been a decid- 
 edly unpleasant experience. Never before has 
 Russian peasant life been painted in such abso- 
 lutely black colors ; and perhaps there is no drama 
 in existence which surpasses his in describing 
 the base in human nature. In his first play, the 
 sub-title, " When the Claw is in the Trap, the 
 
 267 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 Whole Bird is soon lost," gives a clearer idea of 
 the moral import of it than " The Power of Dark- 
 ness," the name by which we know the play. It 
 is taken entirely from peasant life, which is por- 
 trayed with marvelous fidelity. The mujik is not 
 in the least idealized, and we see him in all his 
 coarseness, crudeness, ignorance, superstition, and 
 brutality. Nikita, the hero, steps from one sin 
 into the other ; he seduces the orphan Marina, 
 and casts her from him most cruelly, because 
 she is poor. He betrays his master, the peasant 
 Pyotr, with whose wife he has entered into un- 
 lawful relations, and he helps her to put her 
 husband out of the way by poisoning him. Then 
 they marry, after which he drinks to excess, 
 and neglects her for her step-daughter, whose 
 relations with him do not remain without con- 
 sequences. The darkness into which all the 
 characters wrap themselves becomes gruesome ; 
 and the murder of the newly born infant ren- 
 ders the situation unendurable. While its wail 
 is still in the air, its mother is about to be 
 married to a lad, with whom this union has 
 been arranged, without his knowing the dis- 
 honor and crime which are attached to her 
 
 268 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 and her family. Nikita's conscience, however, 
 awakens ; he leaves the merry wedding guests, 
 and in the barn attempts to commit suicide. 
 His wife and mother, who have been his accom- 
 plices, and who are both weak and bad, find 
 him, and chide him for not making ready to go 
 to the church, where the marriage ceremony 
 is to take place. Finding him obstinate, they 
 threaten him ; but before all the wedding guests, 
 he falls upon his knees, and, encouraged by his 
 father, " makes a clean breast " of the matter, 
 and goes to prison with a light heart. Those who 
 read the play in the translation, or see it enacted 
 on a foreign stage, lose much of its spirit and 
 its truly Russian flavor. For instance, on the 
 Russian stage, when the woman comes in to get 
 a cross to put upon the child's neck before it is 
 murdered, the audience feels her chief sin, which 
 is hypocrisy, and Tolstoy makes his point; but 
 upon a foreign stage, this act invariably creates 
 merriment, which certainly it was not meant 
 to do. Dark and dreadful as the drama is, it 
 meets the requirement of Tolstoy's ideas of art, 
 and tries to speak powerfully to both the emo- 
 tions and the conscience. For the women in the 
 
 269 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 play, who are worse than the men, he finds this 
 apology, uttered by the old servant, Nitrisch : 
 " There are millions and millions of you women 
 and girls, and you are all like the beasts of the 
 forest. You grow up and die, and see nothing 
 and hear nothing; you know nothing of God, 
 and you are like blind dogs, crawling along on 
 your way." The men see and know something ; 
 they go to town and to the inn, and they come 
 in touch with life, poor as it may be. As a 
 pathetic picture of the condition of the Russian 
 peasant, this play surpasses anything which Tol- 
 stoy has written. It is repellent when one reads 
 it, and becomes positively disgusting when seen 
 on the stage. It destroys the idea of the essential 
 goodness of simple people, who are supposed to 
 be spoiled only as they are touched by modern 
 culture ; for these peasants, far away from every- 
 thing which is modern, surpass in brutality and 
 absolute viciousness all that we know of such 
 characteristics among civilized people. 
 
 A play which is a keen satire upon society, 
 and in which Tolstoy contrasts the life of the 
 common people with that of the so-called edu- 
 cated classes, was written shortly after this 
 
 270 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 drama ; and those who accuse him of a lack of 
 humor ought to see a Russian audience con- 
 vulsed by laughter at its presentation. In the 
 play, which is called "The Fruits of Modern 
 Culture," peasants come to town to buy a piece 
 of land from their lord. They are astonished by 
 everything they see and cannot quite comprehend 
 all its meaning. The count is deep in spiritualism, 
 and sees and hears ghosts everywhere. His wife, 
 who has been told that diphtheria is epidemic in 
 the village from which the peasants come, has the 
 room in which they are disinfected by ill-smell- 
 ing drugs. The poor mujiks cannot understand 
 how they can be full of insects which they them- 
 selves cannot see. The daughter of their lord 
 hammers the piano all day. The son belongs to 
 various clubs and societies, and is now especially 
 interested in the "Society for the Culture of 
 Long-haired Greyhounds." The peasants hear in 
 astonishment that the lady has herself tightly 
 laced each day, that her dog wears a costly coat 
 in winter, and that he gets a specially prepared 
 cutlet for each meal. 
 
 Unfortunately, the satire is too sharp, and the 
 caricature too broad ; but the play delights 
 
 271 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 Russian audiences, without making much im- 
 pression upon those persons who partake of 
 these peculiar " fruits of culture." It was given 
 before the czar in Zarskoye Selo, his summer 
 residence; the different characters were repre- 
 sented by members of the royal household, and 
 the audience was composed of the very people 
 at whom the author's sharpest arrows were 
 aimed. 
 
 A third play, written shortly after this one, 
 is called "The Whisky Distiller," and is much 
 less a play than a tract against the manu- 
 facture of liquor and the use of it; as such 
 it has been a very great help in Russian soci- 
 ety of all classes. As literary productions, all 
 of Tolstoy's plays are inferior to any other 
 form of his writings, and one feels that he has 
 come to the drama too late in life. He has never 
 been in sympathetic relation with the stage and 
 its actors, or with anything that is connected 
 with the presentation of the drama. His aver- 
 sion to it is best illustrated by his offhand judg- 
 ment of the "Passion Play" at Oberammergau. 
 The writer came to Yasnaya Polyana, from the 
 Bavarian Mountains, where he had been much 
 
 272 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 uplifted by seeing it. "What can there be 
 beautiful about it?" Tolstoy said, rather sharply. 
 " I should not care to see a fat peasant hanging 
 on a cross. I should think it rather repulsive." 
 And the narrator was checked in his enthusiastic 
 description. 
 
 2/3 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 TOLSTOY'S LITERARY ACTIVITIES AT THE CLOSE 
 OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 
 
 TURGENIEFF'S wish, that Tolstoy should return 
 to the art which he had forsaken, was to be ful- 
 filled. Gradually he worked his way back to its 
 height, through his shorter stories ; such as "The 
 Death of Ivan Ilyitsch," "Walk in the Light, 
 while ye have the Light," and so, to his last great 
 work, "The Resurrection." The first of these 
 sketches is that of a simple and common every- 
 day life ; yet it is a terrible tragedy which takes 
 place in the conscience of the man, as he begins 
 to feel approaching decay and death. With mar- 
 velous skill Tolstoy pictures the emotions in his 
 breast, from the moment when his apprehensions 
 begin until they end in despair. The lies which 
 are told to the man by his physician, as well as 
 by the members of his family, add greatly to his 
 torture, which is not eased until a simple peasant 
 boy tells him the truth : "We must all die, Mas- 
 
 274 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 ter." His whole life passes in review before him, 
 and realizing that it was wrong, he repents, 
 the fear of death leaves him as he bravely 
 faces it, and, "in place of death there was light." 
 The second story, which is the only one in 
 which Tolstoy reaches far back into history for 
 his plot, is that of two men living at the time 
 of Trajan : Pamphilius, who becomes a Christian, 
 and finds in the law of Jesus the happiness of 
 his life ; and Julius, his friend, who is of the 
 world, and suffers disappointment after disap- 
 pointment, in his business, in his own life, and 
 in the life of his son. Crushed by adversity, 
 he seeks Pamphilius, accepts Christianity, lives 
 twenty happy years, and passes into eternity with- 
 out fearing death when it comes upon him. Tol- 
 stoy's own feelings had much to do with the 
 theme of these stories; for old age had crept 
 upon him, and he had more than once faced the 
 great inevitable end. " What does it mean," he 
 writes at this time, "that life is going? That the 
 hair falls out, the teeth decay, and the face is 
 covered by wrinkles? Everything grows ugly 
 and terrible, while the things I once loved, I abhor. 
 There must be a beauty of real life, a beauty 
 
 275 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 which cannot thus fade away." Countess Tolstoy 
 also writes at this time that her husband is grow- 
 ing gray, that he is much changed, and that he is 
 quite silent. Those who had not seen him for a 
 decade noticed all this ; but also realized that in 
 spite of the wrinkled face and gray hair, he had 
 gained a new beauty. The features, so unsym- 
 metrical and roughly hewn, were smoothed over 
 by tenderness; the gray eyes were less piercing 
 and kindlier ; for the effect of his new life was 
 written upon his countenance. There was also 
 about him, what one had always missed ; that 
 certain something which we call a spiritual at- 
 mosphere. He was weaker physically ; but there 
 was still a mental power which was remarkable, 
 and was to manifest itself in his "Resurrection," 
 a story which shows all the virility of his youth, 
 surprising his friends and dismaying his enemies. 
 Never before, in the history of Russian letters, 
 had it happened that an author was permitted to 
 print in a journal which had about two hundred 
 thousand readers, a story which so unmercifully 
 condemned the fundamental ideas of Church and 
 State as did this one of Tolstoy. It seemed as 
 if the censor had been hypnotized ; because the 
 
 276 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 story, even as it finally passed his scrutinizing 
 eyes, had in it all that Tolstoy said about the farce 
 which is played in Russian courts in the name of 
 Justice, and his dangerous theory of giving all 
 the land to the peasantry. In fact, the govern- 
 ment traced certain revolts to these ideas, which 
 had gone among the peasants ; and when they 
 were asked why they had rebelled, they replied : 
 "Tolstoy said that the land belongs to us." 
 
 Prince Dimitry Necklyudoff is, again, the hero 
 of the story. In the home of his aunt he meets 
 Katyuska, a charming girl, who is something be- 
 tween a servant and a daughter of the house, 
 and whom he loves in an innocent way, she re- 
 ciprocating his affection. After a number of 
 years, he returns as an officer and man of the 
 world, whose heart and soul have been spoiled, 
 and ruins Katyuska, forgetting her as soon as duty 
 calls him into the service. She is driven from the 
 house as soon as his aunt becomes aware of the 
 consequences of his affection, and sinks lower and 
 lower, until she becomes an inmate of a brothel. 
 Being suspected of having poisoned a rich mer- 
 chant, she is arrested, brought before the court, 
 and sentenced to banishment. Necklyudoff, her 
 
 277 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 betrayer, is chairman of the jury. Recognizing 
 her, he becomes conscious of his guilt, and tries to 
 make reparation. He wishes to marry her, and 
 off ers to share her punishment ; but she is deaf 
 to his entreaties, and incapable of reciprocating 
 the noble feeling which prompts him to make 
 this self -sacrificing offer. Slowly, by enduring 
 with her the privations of the prison, and by 
 helping and protecting the many victims of Rus- 
 sian injustice, he is able to awaken in her sparks 
 of her first, noble love. In vain he appeals from 
 court to court, and, finally, to the senate, to have 
 her sentence revoked ; and after exhausting all 
 the means at his command, he prepares to go 
 with Katyuska to Siberia. He divides his land 
 among his serfs, and clad in rough, peasant garb, 
 traveling third-class on the railway, he discovers 
 a new world ; the world of the honest, hard-work- 
 ing mujik. He follows Katyuska from one prison 
 station to another, and at last is able to present 
 to her the pardon granted by the czar. An exile 
 and prisoner, like herself, a rather remarkable 
 man, has offered to marry Katyuska, who accepts 
 him, knowing that NecklyudofFs life would be 
 ruined if she permitted him to chain it to hers. 
 
 278 
 
COUNTESS TOLSTOY AND THE YOUNGER CHILDREN 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 He knows that she loves him, and that she is 
 making this sacrifice because of the purity of her 
 affections ; although she has tried to hide from 
 him the real cause of her decision. Returning 
 to his hotel, he is burdened by thoughts of the 
 evil he has seen in the prisons during his jour- 
 ney through Siberia. He turns to his New Testa- 
 ment, which was given him by an Englishman 
 who was visiting the convicts, and, in reading it, 
 is filled by the thought that he must not judge, 
 but have the forgiving spirit, even toward those 
 who had so cruelly treated him and his compan- 
 ions. Finally, the words of Jesus, "Seek ye first 
 the Kingdom of God and His righteousness," 
 convince him of the false philosophy of his life, 
 and he determines to seek that which alone can 
 be found. With that night began his new life ; 
 "because everything which happened to him 
 after this had a better and a higher meaning." 
 
 Both the hero and the heroine have their resur- 
 rection. He, from a meaningless and sinful life 
 in the higher circles to a repentance which tried 
 to make immediate and definite reparation, and 
 finally, to true life through his obedience to the 
 words of Jesus. The heroine had her resurrec- 
 
 279 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 tion, from a low and base life, into which she 
 had fallen through the guilt of another, to noble 
 feelings which she had long forgotten, and to 
 which she was awakened by the same man's 
 kindliness and gentleness. The story shows how 
 powerful, still, when Tolstoy wrote it, were his 
 artistic as well as his critical faculties. With 
 what gigantic strength he tore away the cover- 
 ing of modern society ! How he probed the 
 wounds of Church and State, until banishment 
 was threatened, and excommunication pro- 
 nounced upon him ! With what childlike joy 
 he draws in the beauties of the spring, and with 
 what prophetic insight he shows the discord 
 among men ! Like a John the Baptist, he lays 
 the ax " to the root of the tree ; " but with the 
 gentleness of his great Master he preaches pity 
 and compassion for the poor, love and faith, as 
 forces for the redemption of men. It is, no 
 doubt, his noblest story ; and were it not that he 
 went so far down for his material, using it with- 
 out gloss, it might have been one of the finest 
 productions of modern literature. His pity for 
 those who suffer through the guilt of others is 
 as great as his hate for their oppressors, and as 
 
 280 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 is his contempt for their self-sufficiency and 
 complacency. The language in this story is, if 
 possible, clearer and more definite than in any 
 of his other works. There is not a wasted word ; 
 the aim is direct and sure, and the reader imme- 
 diately becomes conscious of the fact that he is 
 in touch with one who is not a mere story-teller. 
 There is no playing with certain theories and 
 maxims ; but almost a violent outcry, exposing 
 the lowest depths of human nature, the most 
 hidden secrets of society, and calling men to a 
 "Resurrection," through a pure, devoted, self- 
 sacrificing, and simple life. Tolstoy was very sad 
 and unhappy when he wrote certain parts of 
 this story ; he felt himself insulted in his inner- 
 most being by the common sins of uncommon 
 men. At the same time he knew that he was 
 once like them. He saw the nobility of men in 
 most ignoble circumstances; in their dirt and 
 degradation, behind thick prison walls, and even 
 in the lowest brothels. That he told the truth, 
 no one doubts and no one has denied. The Rus- 
 sian courts and the Russian prisons are just 
 what he says they are ; for he did not get his 
 material from hearsay, or from the Imperial 
 
 281 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 Library, as is the custom of those who praise in 
 books and lectures Russia's humane treatment 
 of prisoners. He went to the prisons himself ; 
 and no one will ever quite know how far he 
 went, not to get material for his story, but 
 to come near to his brothers and sisters, and if 
 possible make some reparation for his own sins. 
 What pleased him most after the publication 
 of the " Resurrection," was first, and above all, 
 its moral effect. From nearly every European 
 city came letters from men who cried out : " We 
 are sinners," and who asked the way to their 
 " resurrection." It was the writer's privilege to 
 come with such messages from Vienna and 
 Buda-Pesth, two of the worst cities in Europe, in 
 which numbers of men said to him : "Tell Tolstoy 
 that we shall never again think so ill of women 
 as we have thought." His face brightened when 
 these words were repeated to him ; and in them 
 he found his true reward. "Resurrection" was 
 the first book which for many years he had 
 written for revenue, and that not for himself, 
 but for the unfortunate Duchoborz, who had left 
 their native land and had found a home in the 
 far northwest of Canada. His intervention, and 
 
 282 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 the proceeds of this story, saved hundreds of 
 people from being exterminated by the Russian 
 government, and from starving to death upon 
 the cold plains of the Province of Manitoba. 
 Tolstoy refused all other aid so freely offered 
 him for these unfortunates ; preferring to throw 
 them upon their own resources, to save them 
 from what he considered a greater evil : the evil 
 of pauperism. 
 
 He did not cease to be a preacher and teacher, 
 because he had written another great story ; for 
 with the echoes of its success still in his ears, he 
 began writing an indictment against the modern 
 movement of Social Democracy, which was pub- 
 lished under the title, " Modern Slavery." The 
 writer was in Yasnaya Polyana while it was 
 being written, and had its theories practiced on 
 him during those walks which are so dear to all 
 who visit there. On one of those evenings, 
 as he and Tolstoy were watching the setting sun, 
 the writer, having spoken of his own faith in a 
 future life, ventured to ask : " Count, what about 
 the future ? I mean the future of humanity. 
 What will be the ultimate form of society?" 
 "The future," he answered, "is with God to 
 
 283 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 know, and for us to prepare. Our business is to 
 live right, now, and God will make all things 
 right, then." His remark about socialism was 
 startling. " The greatest enemy to humanity is 
 this Social Democracy ; it is the preparation for 
 a new slavery. It teaches a future good, without 
 a present betterment. It promises golden streets, 
 without the bloody Gethsemane." "But isn't 
 socialism a preparation for an ideal state?" 
 " No, indeed not. It is just the contrary. It will 
 regulate everything, put everything under law, 
 it will destroy the individual, it will enslave him. 
 Socialism begins at the wrong end. You cannot 
 organize anything until you have individuals; 
 you are making chaos out of cosmos ; you will 
 breed terrorism and confusion, which only brute 
 force will be able to quell Socialism begins to 
 regulate the world away from itself. You must 
 make yourself right, before the world around you 
 can be made right. No matter how wrongly the 
 world deals with you, if you are right the world 
 will not harm you and you may bring it to your 
 way of thinking. The modern labor leader 
 wishes to liberate the masses, while he himself 
 is a slave." A few weeks before this, Tolstoy 
 
 284 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 had received a deputation of workingmen from 
 the neighboring city of Tula ; men who had be- 
 come infected by socialistic ideas, and he 
 preached the same sermon to them. They went 
 away much discouraged, but not convinced of 
 the error of their ways. It was not easy to leave 
 him, unconvinced ; for while he spoke, his eyes 
 rested firmly upon one, and his sentences came 
 unbroken, like water from a flowing spring. His 
 sermon, for such it always was, awakened in one 
 the consciousness, the holiness, and the responsi- 
 bility of the self. He magnified the value of the 
 soul, and minimized the value of the things of 
 which the socialists had spoken; the lack of 
 comforts and luxuries. He felt all the wrong 
 which they were suffering, but he insisted that 
 they themselves must be right, " be born again." 
 How often these words resounded among the 
 towering oaks which shade his customary walk. 
 '' You must deny yourself, give up, re- 
 nounce, sacrifice, and obey only the Christ." 
 To all the philosophy which one quoted, he would 
 say abruptly, "That is not the law of Jesus." 
 He would never grow angry; but he spoke 
 firmly, like one who was convinced that he alone 
 
 285 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 had the truth. At that time he also wrote an 
 open letter on the subject of patriotism, and 
 addressed to the czar. He sent it to a Moscow 
 paper for publication, but of course it was 
 promptly returned, and was afterwards published 
 in London. It elaborates his well-known theory 
 of the evil of so-called patriotism, condemns the 
 killing of countless numbers of men at the com- 
 mand of the czar, and, not in unkind language, 
 calls his majesty a murderer ; not less a mur- 
 derer than the men who, crazed by some fantas- 
 tic idea, lift their hands against a king, and slay 
 him. 
 
 Tolstoy's fame was beginning to reach the 
 masses, among whom discontent had manifested 
 itself, and they were looking to him as the cham- 
 pion of their rights. The following letter which 
 he received is interesting, because it testifies to 
 this growing feeling, and because it graphically 
 and truthfully pictures the condition of the 
 peasantry : 
 
 Most Gracious Sir, our defender and protector : 
 
 We kneel before you, weeping hot and bitter 
 
 tears, and pray that you may not leave us ; even 
 
 286 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 as a father does not leave his children. We want 
 to tell you how the authorities are treating those 
 of us who have become Sectarians. The police 
 of the whole district have come, and they go 
 at night from one house to another, cursing, and 
 frightening the women and children. Wherever 
 there was a soul which had cut itself loose from 
 the Church, there the police came, and settled 
 down, often six or eight of them, and ate and 
 drank. They asked for eggs, milk, and butter, 
 but paid for nothing. The housewife had to 
 serve them, and stand before them while they 
 were eating. They beat old women who were 
 too feeble to wait upon them. They asked for 
 horse and wagon, and if any one refused, he was 
 beaten most unmercifully. The Sectarians were 
 driven out of one village by the other inhabit- 
 ants, because of the continued persecution on 
 the part of the authorities. The peasants who 
 wanted to help these persecuted people were 
 themselves persecuted and fined. 
 
 We pray that a man may be found who could 
 tell our woe with such a loud voice that it might 
 be heard in Heaven ; because we cannot do it 
 ourselves. They press our throats, so that we 
 
 287 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 cannot even talk in a whisper. Letters are not 
 sent to us, or from us, and we are completely 
 isolated from the world. The officials have grown 
 so violent that after the czar had pardoned 
 eleven women, they refused to sell them railroad 
 tickets at Charkoff ; so they had to walk, carrying 
 their little children in their arms. After twenty 
 miles, they succumbed ; and only through the 
 intervention of a charitable woman did they 
 finally get transportation to their homes. If 
 only some one would help us, who are suffering 
 such great misfortunes ! some one who would 
 be led by the Spirit, and who could fly like a bird 
 through the whole world, and proclaim to it our 
 great woe. 
 
 The world did hear ; but not the Russian 
 world, for its ears and eyes were closed by the 
 censor ; and the peasants who wrote this letter 
 suffered severely ; for it is still forbidden in 
 Russia to complain audibly. Tolstoy's fame as 
 a champion of the people's rights, and as their 
 helper in need, dates from his remarkable effort 
 in their behalf, when in the year 1891-92, he 
 was the leading spirit in relieving the distress 
 
 288 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 caused by the famine. Money and helpers came 
 to him from all parts of Europe and America ; 
 and his leadership was as successful in this phil- 
 anthropic movement as had been his reluctance 
 to undertake it. He traveled, in the depth of 
 winter, from village to village, organizing relief 
 societies, and establishing soup-kitchens, which 
 were the means of keeping millions of peasants 
 from starvation. The closing winter of the nine- 
 teenth century Tolstoy spent in the Crimea, 
 carried there because of his severe illness ; his 
 friends hoping much for him from the mild cli- 
 mate of Russia's Riviera. There he lived again 
 his eventful youth. His literary career seemed 
 past, his health was failing, and although the 
 fine climate permitted him to recuperate to some 
 extent, he returned to Yasnaya Polyana the next 
 spring, an old man, who was waiting for " one 
 fight more ; the best and the last." 
 
 289 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 SOME time ago one of the most widely circulated 
 German journals sent requests to its readers to 
 name the most celebrated ten living men. Tol- 
 stoy was given the first place by hundreds of 
 votes ; and there was scarcely a list sent in from 
 which his name was omitted. The same thing, it is 
 reported, was done in France with very much the 
 same result. This kind of tribunal may be worth 
 much or little, nevertheless it indicates the fact 
 that among living men there is none whose name 
 is more widely known than that of Tolstoy. His 
 books have been translated into all the languages 
 spoken among civilized people ; and a recent and 
 somewhat inaccurate compilation of the books 
 and articles to be classed under " Tolstoyana," 
 numbers more than four thousand. Of course 
 the number of books written by him and about 
 him indicates nothing beyond the fact that he 
 is a voluminous writer, and that he has aroused 
 
 290 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 much critical comment among men. He is known 
 beyond the reach of his writings, among millions 
 of peasants who cannot read ; and among count- 
 less numbers of all classes who have never had the 
 opportunity or taste to read anything that he has 
 written. Into the obscurest corners of the earth 
 has his fame gone, and one is startled by seeing 
 how instantly his name awakens interest and 
 provokes comment and discussion. To some, he 
 is, like Isaiah, a great prophet who has again 
 brought to men the first true notes of religion ; 
 or a John the Baptist, the forerunner of a new 
 kingdom. To others again he is the veritable 
 Anti-Christ ; his teachings destructive of Chris- 
 tianity and void of what they call true religion. 
 Some, again, consider him a man, half lunatic, 
 who has perverted his art and misused his grand 
 opportunity of giving to the world great novels ; 
 while others talk of him as a shrewd poseur, who 
 has increased the sale of his books by studied 
 oddities and eccentricities. But no matter what 
 men call him, they all agree that he is a won- 
 derful personality whose influence has permeated 
 civilized society; and even his severest critics 
 have felt this influence although they may have 
 
 291 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 studiously avoided reading his books. It seems 
 as if great thoughts become an atmosphere which 
 men must breathe in, whether they choose to do 
 so or not ; and in spite of themselves they begin 
 to think those thoughts even if they do not im- 
 mediately act upon them. Tolstoy's feelings or 
 something like them have come to many an offi- 
 cer in the Russian army, who had fought, gam- 
 bled, and drunk, and who suddenly asked himself: 
 " Have I been doing right ? " and some evening 
 he would communicate his thoughts to a com- 
 panion, swearing him to secrecy, and he would 
 reply: "I have been thinking the same thing; 
 this is not life, this is death ; " and the next day 
 they would resign their commissions and be 
 declared " Tolstoy mad " because they began to 
 earn their bread by the sweat of their brows. 
 Many a judge who arrogantly meted out so- 
 called justice to his fellow men, saw a " hand- 
 writing on the wall : " " Judge not that ye be not 
 judged/' and stepped from his bench, among the 
 culprits. Legislators and officials in our own 
 country have felt this influence in a similar way ; 
 and at least one place, the city of Toledo, is gov- 
 erned by a mayor who acknowledges himself 
 
 292 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 Tolstoy's disciple. Little villages are named, of 
 whose existence he does not even know, in 
 which households are governed by the law of 
 Jesus ; and the number of wealthy manufacturers 
 who have been influenced by him in the treat- 
 ment of their employees is larger than one would 
 imagine. Among many he is a " fad," which 
 however cannot endure, because Tolstoy can 
 never become fashionable ; and you cannot put 
 his teachings on and off like a garment. They 
 grip the life as by a mighty force, and no mat- 
 ter how much one shakes one's head over them, 
 and how much one lives in direct opposition to 
 them, one can never quite shake off the feeling 
 that, after all, the inner life is of more value 
 than mere adventure, and the inner joy more 
 than what men call happiness ; and while most of 
 us say we cannot live like Tolstoy, nearly all of 
 us wish that we might. One would scarcely have 
 thought that so serious, so religious a literature 
 as Tolstoy has given us could gain any foothold, 
 especially in Europe ; which was under the sway 
 of German rationalism and French naturalism 
 and from whose sphere Christianity in its severe 
 aspects was quite ruled out ; and yet Europe has 
 
 293 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 not been so dominated at any time since litera- 
 ture has been an art which touches more or less 
 all sorts and conditions of men, as it is by the 
 writings of Tolstoy. In Russia as well as in 
 other countries of Europe, men talk about the 
 ethics of Jesus as they have never talked before ; 
 and they do it largely under the influence of this 
 great personality. Peter Rosegger, who in the 
 Austrian Alps preaches a sane and sweet reli- 
 gion, and who lives close to the people from whose 
 loins he sprang, says : " All modern, social, and 
 spiritual movements, even such as do not wish 
 it, are coming near to the Christian ideal. To 
 live for others, to see in the well-being of others 
 one's own happiness, to help the weak and down- 
 trodden, to forgive everything, to spiritualize 
 science in order to find God in the truth, are the 
 ideal Christianity." Nitsche's Oversoul has been 
 conquered by the self-sacrificing spirit mani- 
 fested by the peasant of Yasnaya. How much 
 this is due to the teachings of Tolstoy one can- 
 not easily say; and it does not matter, either 
 to him or to any lover of truth. The writer 
 discussed with Tolstoy this subject; this phe- 
 nomenon of some great truth's or phase of 
 
 294 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 truth's becoming manifest at once in all parts 
 of the civilized world and coming from various 
 sources. The Germans call it "Zeitgeist." The 
 early Christians called it " The Spirit of Truth," 
 which came from their Master. 
 > Looking back over Tolstoy's life, one sees a 
 scion of a wealthy and aristocratic family, ques- 
 tioning the value of the attainments of modern 
 culture while yet reaching out after them, and 
 beginning to try to fathom the great problem of 
 the meaning of life. He leaves the university, 
 quite convinced of the uselessness of what men 
 call science ; and devotes himself to his serfs, 
 who good-naturedly take all that he gives them 
 without showing much appreciation of his efforts, 
 or improvement in their condition. He enters the 
 army, and returns home disgusted by the gore 
 of battle and the curse of war. He writes novels, 
 but turns from the art which was born in him, 
 as useless and immoral. He is repelled by the 
 glitter of society, by its hollowness and its un- 
 truthfulness. He looks behind the scenes of the 
 stage on which is played the game which we call 
 civilization ; but sees the mask which the players 
 wear ; and knowing that at heart they are worse 
 
 295 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 than barbarians, that which we call art and cul- 
 ture, he calls stage-trappings. Science he finds to 
 be a lie, religion a superstition, and his own life 
 so empty and meaningless that he is ready to 
 choose death in preference to it. He at last finds 
 the faith that saves him and gives meaning to his 
 life. He finds the Christ and believes in his words ; 
 making them the law of his life. He learns to 
 ove men and to love them regardless of their 
 lass, nationality, or race; and in loving and 
 rving them he is doing the will of God, which 
 s the chief aim of his existence. He gives up 
 is wealth and all those outward signs of refine- 
 .ent by which men of his class surround them- 
 Ives, and lives that simple, non-resistant life 
 m which has gone out this world-wide influ- 
 ce. A close analysis of his teachings brings 
 to the following conclusions : He was born 
 th a sensitive conscience. It constantly judged 
 aAd accused him and none the less his surround- 
 ings, making plain to him always the contrast 
 tween the ideal and the real; consequently 
 thjere was a continual struggle going on within 
 him. To quiet his conscience and bring to it that 
 peifice which is its true atmosphere have been his 
 
 296 
 
A RECENT PORTRAIT OF TOLSTOY 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 endeavor " from his youth up," the theme of his 
 writings and the subject of his sermons. 
 
 He was accused not only by the wrongs which 
 he committed but by the privileges that he 
 enjoyed and which were withheld from others. 
 Tjtfi^contrast between his comfort, his pleasures, 
 his hMfetiries, and the poverty of the poor was 
 always a tbrture to him, and to equalize things 
 was his onty desire ; to make right the great 
 wrong practiced by his class was his aim in life. 
 It was and is his great regret that he has but 
 partially succeeded in doing so. He saw in the 
 simple life of the peasant a step toward his 
 ideal ; in his patience, frugality, industry, and 
 simplicity of mind he found the example he 
 wished to follow ; and he began to work with his 
 hands, to mend shoes, fetch the water, and build 
 brick ovens. Little by little he began to discover 
 that the peasant's philosophy of life had in it the 
 germs of the new world order, such as Jesus came 
 to establish ; and he condemned all art and cul- 
 ture which did not stand the test of that phi- 
 losophy. He believed that culture and science 
 served the rich and the strong, that they ele- 
 vated a few and dragged down the mass of men, 
 
 297 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 which can be elevated only by a return to the 
 simple life as it is in nature, and whose laws of 
 conduct are established in the Gospel of Jesus. 
 In studying his words Tolstoy found that non- 
 resistance toward all evil-doers was the only way 
 of not being dragged to their level and thg.^ty 
 way of not increasing violence among meSr He 
 believes in his doctrines because they are based 
 upon his own experience and have Jaeen drawn 
 from the word of God. They are the laws of 
 his life. This gives him constant courage and a 
 never-wavering faith in the ultimate victory of 
 his teachings. He believes that the Kingdom of 
 God will come, and that it can come immediately 
 into each life as it becomes subject to the law 
 of God. There is in everything he says a note 
 of exaggeration which comes from this sensitive- 
 ness of conscience, and which has often made 
 him unjust to himself and to others. It is as 
 difficult to believe all the things he says about 
 himself, as it is difficult to believe all he says 
 about society as it is, although there is no doubt 
 that he means to see and to tell the truth ; but 
 as it is with men who are careful not to grow 
 stoop-shouldered, that they lean too far back, 
 
 298 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 so he, in his eagerness to tell nothing but the 
 truth, exaggerates and distorts that truth quite 
 unconsciously. There is no doubt that he has 
 tried seriously to live according to his ideal, and 
 there is no doubt in his own mind that he has 
 most miserably failed. " I am no saint," he says, 
 " and have never said that I am. I am only a man 
 who is carried away by his passion, and some- 
 times and maybe always does not say just what 
 he thinks and feels. Not because I do not wish 
 to, but often because I cannot, and because I 
 either exaggerate or am mistaken. With my 
 doing it is still worse. I am a thoroughly weak 
 man with sinful habits who desires to serve the 
 God of Truth, but who constantly stumbles. If 
 people consider me a man who does not sin or 
 make mistakes, then I must be a terrible hypo- 
 crite ; but if they consider me a weak man, then 
 the difference between my words and my deeds 
 is a sign of weakness and not a sign of hypocrisy 
 and lying ; and, above all, then I appear as just 
 what I am, a pitiable but upright man, who has 
 always wished with his whole heart to be a thor- 
 oughly good man ; and that means that I wished 
 to be a servant of God." He is as modest as he 
 
 299 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 is honest and his fame has not spoiled him. He 
 does not wave away praise like one who is sur- 
 feited by it ; he accepts it graciously where it is 
 honestly given, but stifles all attempts at flattery 
 or semi-worship. He never speaks of himself as 
 a prophet or apostle and he has never been known 
 to boast of his achievements ; in fact he lacks all 
 those elements which have spoiled many men for 
 leadership. He has neither conceit nor egotism. 
 He does not care to have incense waved before 
 him, and those who come to Yasnaya for that 
 purpose soon find themselves without occupation. 
 And yet one immediately grows conscious of his 
 greatness ; there is something defying analysis 
 which marks him. It may be only what the vis- 
 itor brings with him of anticipation, it may be 
 only the nimbus which fame weaves around his 
 head, and yet it is more than this by far. It may 
 be just that aristocratic breeding which, in spite 
 of himself, surrounds him and makes him differ- 
 ent from others of more lowly birth ; but if it 
 is that, he has it in a larger degree than any of 
 Russia's nobility, from the members of the czar's 
 household, down. It may be, after all, the exalt- 
 edness of the lowly, of which his Master speaks, 
 
 300 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 which one notices ; a strange, spiritual exalted- 
 ness which is not akin to the fanaticism of emo- 
 tional religionists, but which is great and strong 
 and high because it comes from above and has 
 its roots deep in the hearts of men. Tolstoy be- 
 longs to the few among the great whose glory 
 does not disappear by contact with them ; in fact 
 he is greatest and noblest at close range. His 
 speech has none of the hardness which rings 
 so unpleasantly in his writings, his voice has that 
 tender tone which woos and wins one ; and al- 
 though it rings out defiantly and definitely it 
 never grows harsh from anger or his words bitter 
 from hate. He often hurts one by his scrutiny 
 because he divines the things one hides from him, 
 or detects the falsehoods hidden in one's speech. 
 Perhaps the strangest thing about his personality 
 is, that one is always under its spell after having 
 once come in close touch with it. An important 
 witness to this is Mr. Wolganoff , a wealthy mer- 
 chant of Moscow, who belongs to the Tolstoy 
 circle. " Since I have learned to know him he 
 seems always with me, and in all questions of 
 life he gives me advice. In moments of spiritual 
 exaltation it seems to me as if he were with me, 
 
 301 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 and would tell me just what to do, and I have 
 the satisfaction of always having done the right 
 thing if I follow his advice." Even those who 
 come but to see in him a curiosity go away with 
 the touch of that life clinging to them, and more 
 than one newspaper reporter, after seeing him, 
 has said : " Life seems a different thing now." 
 To explain all this one need not fall into any mys- 
 tical speculations ; the life of the spirit is the 
 powerful life and the attractive life, and wher- 
 ever it has genuine expression through a man, 
 there men will say : " It has been good for us to 
 be here." But it is not a life which exhales the 
 perfume of cloistered holiness ; his piety is not 
 musty ; he is too human, too active in earth's 
 aif airs ; he is too much of an iconoclast to waste 
 his time in counting beads or mumbling prayers. 
 He does more praying doing God's errands than 
 many men do upon their knees, begging for grace 
 and cake ; and he does it at an expense of time 
 and strength which are more and better than fasts 
 and long night vigils. By many hours of conver- 
 sation with burdened men, and by letters which 
 fill pages, he gives advice to the erring, to the 
 perplexed, and to the weak. It may seem a trivial 
 
 302 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 example, but to the writer it seems pertinent and 
 great because it concerned him at a very critical 
 time in life. He came to Yasnaya Polyana, a boy 
 with foolish questionings, a stranger without a 
 line of introduction, troubled by spiritual burdens ; 
 and this man, struggling with great thoughts 
 and in the depths of a personal grief, gave him 
 hours in which he taught him, and preached to 
 him lessons and sermons which lasted through 
 life. More than once he gave him letters of intro- 
 duction to friends in Russian cities which opened 
 doors into other rich lives and made the usually 
 unpleasant sojourn there a great delight. This 
 was not done from any selfish motive ; this stran- 
 ger in common with others had nothing to give, 
 
 - then, not even a pen which might spread his 
 praise and increase his fame ; and had Tolstoy 
 known that some day he would attempt to do 
 this, his treatment might have been less cordial 
 and his help less freely offered. Yet the writer is 
 aware that but few can have this personal touch 
 with him, and that neither this book nor any 
 other book can bring it ; the mass of men must 
 judge him by his works and his words. His works 
 
 -by that is meant his achievements, outside 
 303 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 of the books which he has written can scarcely 
 be called great, nor can they be traced very defi- 
 nitely by the historian. Tolstoy has organized 
 nothing, established nothing, destroyed nothing, 
 built nothing. He could have done a great deal 
 even in autocratic Russia ; but he was too much 
 concerned with his conscience, with gaining his 
 own peace, to accomplish what the world calls great 
 things. He had plans for relieving distress among 
 men, but he saw the causes too keenly and knew 
 that mere philanthropy was only a palliative and 
 often did more harm than good. One cannot help 
 criticising him severely on this point ; it does look 
 as if he had slipped from underneath the burden 
 very gracefully ; and it looks like flight, when 
 a great deal might have been accomplished. He 
 has not enough sympathy with those who try to 
 do their little in the world as it is, and who can- 
 not go anywhere into the wilderness and organ- 
 ize a system of their own. Yet he had to see that 
 even with filthy lucre, something can be done 
 and that it must and can be used for the saving 
 of men. His work of keeping from starvation 
 millions of peasants, and doing it in a systematic 
 way, ought to have convinced him that there is 
 
 304 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 some good in money and in organized charity. 
 Yet to the end he regards money as a curse, and 
 is happy when his sons come to him and tell 
 him of the cares and sorrows that it brings ; for 
 then like any ordinary mortal he can say : " I told 
 you so." 
 
 Tolstoy's writings are best characterized by say- 
 ing that there is in them an overwhelming desire 
 for truthfulness. This explains the simple plot 
 of his stories, the naturalness of his characters, 
 the absence of artificial tension ; and it explains 
 also his realism, which to Anglo-Saxon readers 
 is his least desirable quality. He never sacrifices 
 truth to form or to good taste ; his stories are 
 loosely constructed and broken into by his moral- 
 izings which are no doubt tedious to readers who 
 are anxious to know whether "they died or were 
 married and lived happily ever after." One can- 
 not persuade him that he might have preached 
 more convincingly by making the sermon less 
 apparent. But as he says : " Sometimes one takes 
 the pen and writes, 'Early in the morning Ivan 
 Nikitsch rose and called his son/ and suddenly 
 one says to himself : 'Old man, why are you ly- 
 ing ? you don't even know such a man as Ivan 
 
 305 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 Nikitsch.'" He abandoned the story only to 
 return to it ; and even now he is writing one in 
 a reminiscent mood, dealing with his life in the 
 Caucasus. When at the completion of his labors 
 his memoirs are written, the critic, whether he 
 prizes them or not, will be able to say of them, 
 in the words of Tolstoy himself : " The hero of 
 his stories, whom he loved with all his heart, 
 whom he tried to represent in all his beauty, 
 and who always was and will remain beautiful, 
 was Truth." 
 
 A word remains to be said about his theology. 
 " God is his father, all men are his brethren." 
 This is the whole of his theological and socio- 
 logical creed. He tried hard to be an agnostic, 
 and agree with Confucianists, Buddhists, and 
 atheists, and never consider the conception of 
 God. "But suddenly," he says, "I grew to be 
 lonesome and fearful, I did not know why ; but 
 I began to realize that I was spiritually degen- 
 erating because I was drifting away from God. 
 I began to think how strange it is to say whether 
 there is a God or not ; and then it seemed as if I 
 had found him anew. I feared that this assurance 
 might leave me, might grow dull; the main 
 
 306 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 feature of this. feeling is that it gives one the 
 consciousness of absolute security, the knowledge 
 that God exists, that he is good, that he knows 
 one, that I am part of him, one of his chil- 
 dren." Tolstoy is an agnostic in regard to the 
 person of Jesus. It does not matter to him who 
 he was, whether God or man ; but his word was 
 divine, it was the law of God revealed through 
 Jesus, and in that he has implicit faith ; greater 
 faith than most of us who know all about Christ's 
 miraculous conception and who worship him as 
 God. Tolstoy has faith enough to believe that 
 his faith is true, to take upon himself the conse- 
 quences of it, and to believe in Christ's ultimate 
 triumph. This is what he says: "One more 
 effort and the Galilean will conquer ; not in that 
 terrible sense in which the heathen emperor 
 prophesied his conquest ; but in the true sense in 
 which he said of himself that he had ' overcome 
 the world.' He will conquer in that simple and 
 reasonable way, that if we have the courage to 
 confess Him, soon all those persecutions which 
 come upon his followers will cease ; then there 
 will be neither prison nor gallows, neither war 
 nor burning, neither poverty nor beggary, under- 
 
 307 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 neath which the Christian world is now groan- 
 ing." 
 
 Tolstoy has brought that glorious time down 
 to himself ; he is not tortured by fear of prison, 
 of sickness, or of death ; he is living in the mil- 
 lennium and he says that we also may live so 
 if we let the Kingdom of God come into our 
 hearts. May I in closing repeat what I said 
 four years ago, after a close look into his life ? 
 " No ; he is not the Christ, but he is a John the 
 Baptist ; his gospel is written on the tablets of 
 Moses ; his beatitudes have in them the ring of 
 the Ten Commandments. They were graven by 
 the finger of Jehovah, not spoken by the gentle 
 Jesus. But his way of preaching the gospel 
 reaches where our way does not reach ; his gospel 
 reaches the lowest, and brings the greatest low. 
 It is a gospel which cannot be misunderstood ; 
 it is as clear as noonday. It is a gospel which 
 rouses in man the will, which awakens the soul, 
 and lifts it from its slumber or sloth to a large 
 life and to heroic service. God needs such men 
 in this His day large men who live above the 
 fog ; great men, ready to sacrifice for righteous- 
 ness' sake. There are too few who do not hedge 
 
 308 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 and halt and temporize, who dare to bear the 
 brunt ; too many time-servers, dust-lickers, who 
 grow like mushrooms in the shade, and die like 
 morning-glories in the broad sunlight ; too few 
 of us who believe that the gospel is for this 
 time and forever, and who are willing that the 
 Kingdom of God should come within us. This 
 is Tolstoy's great cry : ' The Kingdom of God is 
 within you, and you are to be the pattern after 
 which the kingdom of this world is to fashion 
 itself/ ' Young man/ he said, and they were 
 almost the last words which he spoke to me that 
 evening: 'you sweat too much blood for the 
 world ; sweat some for yourself first. You can- 
 not make the world better till you are better/ 
 I have seen many a mountain, and I love 
 them all, the Jungf rau in her chastity, Mont 
 Blanc with his icy collar, the Monk, hooded and 
 shrouded, but there is one rock standing alone 
 above the village of Zermatt, bride of the sky, 
 mother of life-giving waters, now shrouded in 
 mystic clouds, now sharp and clear, standing 
 between earth and heaven. It is the solitary 
 Matterhorn which I love best. The Matterhorn 
 among the great is Tolstoy. I still feel resting 
 
 309 
 
TOLSTOY THE MAN 
 
 upon me those eyes with their life-giving 
 warmth ; I still hear the mellow voice which 
 persistently but lovingly said : ' Young man, you 
 cannot make the world better until you are 
 better ; ' and then I said : ' Good-night/ I may 
 never again say to him ' Good-night/ but I trust 
 that I shall say, ' Good-morning/ ' 
 
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