CHAPTER II

CHILDHOOD AND EARLY MANHOOD

Yásnaya Polyána. Aunt Tatiána. The German Tutor. The brothers: Nicholas, Sergius and Demetrius. Doúnetchka. The house-serfs. A family scene. Pilgrims and saints. Death of father and grandmother. Flying. Personal appearance. Corporal punishment. Originality. Riding lessons. The Countess Osten-Saken. Aunt P. I. Úshkof. Books. Abstract speculations. Kazán University. Imprisonment. Diary. Demetrius. Books: Dickens and Rousseau. Yásnaya again. Petersburg. Consistency. Rudolph the Musician. Women. Gambling. Gipsy girls. Money difficulties. The liberty of Russian nobles.

YÁSNAYA POLYÁNA (Bright Glade), where Tolstoy was born, had been an ancestral estate of the Volkónskys and belonged to his mother, the Princess Marie. It is situated ten miles south of Toúla, in a pleasantly undulating country. The estate, which is enclosed by an old brick wall, is well wooded and has many avenues of lime-trees, a river and four lakes. In Tolstoy's grandfather's time, sentinels kept guard at the small, round, brick towers, which now stand neglected at the entrance of the main birch avenue leading to the house. Something of the great confidence in himself and readiness to despise others, which despite all his efforts to be humble, characterise Tolstoy, may be due to the fact that he was born and grew up on an estate where for generations his ancestors had been the only people of importance.

'Aunty' Tatiána Alexándrovna Érgolsky had been brought up by his grandmother on an equality with her own children. She (Tatiána) was resolute, self-sacrificing, and, says Tolstoy,

must have been very attractive with her enormous plait of crisp, black, curly hair, her jet-black eyes, and vivacious, energetic expression. When I remember her she was more than forty, and I never thought about her as pretty or not pretty. I simply loved her eyes, her smile, and her dusky broad little hand, with its energetic little cross vein.

We had two aunts and a grandmother; they all had more right to us than Tatiána Alexándrovna, whom we called Aunt only by habit (for our kinship was so distant that I could never remember what it was), but she took the first place in our upbringing by right of love to us (like Buddha in the story of the wounded swan), and we felt her right.

I had fits of passionately tender love for her.

I remember once, when I was about five, how I squeezed in behind her on the sofa in the drawing-room and she caressingly touched me with her hand. I caught it and began to kiss it, and to cry with tender love of her....

Aunty Tatiána had the greatest influence on my life. From early childhood she taught me the spiritual delight of love. She taught me this joy not by words; but by her whole being she filled me with love. I saw, I felt, how she enjoyed loving, and I understood the joy of love. This was the first thing.

Secondly, she taught me the delights of an unhurried, quiet life.

Another, though a much less important, influence was that of the tutor, Theodore Rössel (who figures as Karl Ivánovitch Mauer in Tolstoy's early sketch, _Childhood_). Tolstoy owes his excellent knowledge of German and French to the fact that his father, following a custom common among well-to-do Russians, engaged foreign teachers and let his children learn languages not so much from books as by conversation, while they were still quite young. Rössel's 'honest, straightforward, and loving nature' helped to develop the boy's good qualities.

Tolstoy got on well, too, with his brothers, who were five-and-a-half, two, and one year older than himself, as well as with his little sister Marie, his junior by a year-and-a-half.

He not only loved, but deeply respected, his eldest brother Nicholas (pet name, Nikólenka), whose influence lasted until, and even after, his death in 1860. Of him Tolstoy says:

He was a wonderful boy, and later a wonderful man. Tourgénef used to say of him very truly, that he only lacked certain faults to be a great writer. He lacked the chief fault needed for authorship--vanity, and was not at all interested in what people thought of him. The qualities of a writer which he possessed were, first of all, a fine artistic sense, an extremely developed sense of proportion, a good-natured gay sense of humour, an extraordinary inexhaustible imagination, and a truthful and highly moral view of life; and all this without the slightest conceit. His imagination was such that for hours together he could tell fairy-tales or ghost-stories, or amusing tales in the style of Mrs. Radcliffe, without a pause and with such vivid realisation of what he was narrating that one forgot it was all invention.... When he was not narrating or reading (he read a great deal) he used to draw. He almost invariably drew devils with horns and twisted moustaches, intertwined in the most varied attitudes and engaged in the most diverse occupations. These drawings were also full of imagination.

It was he who, when I was five and my brothers, Dmítry six and Sergéy seven, announced to us that he possessed a secret by means of which, when disclosed, all men would become happy: there would be no more disease, no trouble, no one would be angry with anybody, all would love one another, and all would become 'Ant-Brothers.'... We even organised a game of Ant-Brothers, which consisted in sitting under chairs, sheltering ourselves with boxes, screening ourselves with handkerchiefs, and cuddling against one another while thus crouching in the dark.... The Ant-Brotherhood was revealed to us, but not the chief secret: the way for all men to cease suffering any misfortune, to leave off quarrelling and being angry, and become continuously happy; this secret he said he had written on a green stick, buried by the road at the edge of a certain ravine, at which spot (since my body must be buried somewhere) I have asked to be buried in memory of Nikólenka. Besides this little stick, there was also a certain Fanfarónof Hill, up which he said he could lead us, if only we would fulfil all the appointed conditions. These were: first, to stand in a corner and not think of a white bear. I remember how I used to get into a corner and try (but could not possibly manage) not to think of a white bear. The second condition was to walk without wavering along a crack between the boards of the floor; and the third was, for a whole year not to see a hare, alive or dead or cooked; and it was necessary to swear not to reveal these secrets to any one. He who fulfilled these, and other more difficult conditions which Nikólenka would communicate later, would have one wish, whatever it might be, fulfilled.

Nikólenka, as I now conjecture, had probably read or heard of the Freemasons--of their aspirations toward the happiness of mankind, and of the mysterious initiatory rites on entering their order; he had probably also heard about the Moravian Brothers [in Russian _ant_ is _mouravéy_].

Writing when he was over seventy, Tolstoy adds:

The ideal of ant-brothers lovingly clinging to one another, though not under two arm-chairs curtained by handkerchiefs, but of all mankind under the wide dome of heaven, has remained the same for me. As I then believed that there existed a little green stick whereon was written the message which could destroy all evil in men and give them universal welfare, so I now believe that such truth exists and will be revealed to men, and will give them all it promises.

It was, however, Tolstoy's second brother, Sergius (or Sergéy: pet name, Seryózha), whom Tolstoy in his young days most enthusiastically admired and wished to imitate. Sergius was handsome, proud, straightforward, and singularly sincere. Of him Leo Tolstoy says:

I loved and wished to be like him. I admired his handsome appearance, his singing (he was always singing), his drawing, his gaiety and especially (strange as it may seem to say so) the spontaneity of his egotism. I myself was always aware of myself and self-conscious; I always guessed, rightly or wrongly, what other people thought or felt about me, and this spoilt my joy in life. This probably is why in others I specially liked the opposite feature--spontaneity of egotism. And for this I specially loved Seryózha. The word _loved_ is not correct. I loved Nikólenka; but for Seryózha I was filled with admiration as for something quite apart from and incomprehensible to me.

Of the third brother, Demetrius (or Dmítry: pet name, Mítenka), only a year older than himself, Tolstoy tells us:

I hardly remember him as a boy. I only know by hearsay that as a child he was very capricious. He was nearest to me in age and I played with him oftenest, but did not love him as much as I loved Seryózha, nor as I loved and respected Nikólenka. He and I lived together amicably. I do not recollect that we quarrelled. Probably we did, and we may even have fought.... As a child I remember nothing special about Mítenka except his childish merriment.

Tolstoy says he was 'afraid of beggars, and of one of the Volkónskys, who used to pinch me; but, I think, of no one else.'

A girl, Doúnetchka Temeshóf, was adopted as a member of the family. She was a natural daughter of a wealthy bachelor friend of Tolstoy's father.

I remember how, when I had already learnt French, I was made to teach her that alphabet. At first it went all right (we were both about five years old), but later she probably became tired, and ceased to name correctly the letters I pointed out. I insisted. She began to cry. I did the same, and when our elders came, we could say nothing owing to our hopeless tears.

In his later recollections of her he says:

She was not clever, but was a good, simple girl; and, above all, so pure that we boys never had any but brotherly relations with her.

By which he means that there was no flirtation.

The relations between the family and its servants, who were serfs (and of whom there were about thirty), were, as in many a Russian family, often really affectionate. One instance of a serf's devotion has already been quoted; and such cases were not rare. In _Childhood_ mention is made of the old housekeeper, Praskóvya Isáyevna, who was completely devoted to the welfare of the family, and Tolstoy says: 'All that I there wrote about her was actual truth.'

Here is another example illustrating both kindly toleration of minor offences committed by a serf, and the family affection which sweetened life:

My pleasantest recollections of my father are of his sitting with grandmother on the sofa, helping her to play Patience. My father was polite and tender with every one, but to my grandmother he was always particularly tenderly submissive. They used to sit--Grandma playing Patience, and from time to time taking pinches from a gold snuff-box. My aunts sit in arm-chairs, and one of them reads aloud. We children come in to say good-night, and sometimes sit there. We always take leave of Grandma and our aunts by kissing their hands. I remember once, in the middle of a game of Patience and of the reading, my father interrupts my aunt, points to a looking-glass and whispers something. We all look in the same direction. It was the footman Tíkhon, who (knowing that my father was in the drawing-room) was going into the study to take some tobacco from a big leather folding tobacco-pouch. My father sees him in the looking-glass, and notices his figure carefully stepping on tip-toe. My aunts laugh. Grandmama for a long time does not understand, but when she does, she too smiles cheerfully. I am enchanted by my father's kindness, and on taking leave of him kiss his white muscular hand with special tenderness.

An important feature of the life in which Tolstoy grew up was furnished by the half-crazy saints who swarmed in Russia in those days, and are still occasionally to be met with. Readers of _Childhood_ will remember Grísha, an admirable specimen of that class, about whom Tolstoy makes the following characteristic note in his memoirs:

Grísha is an invented character. We had many of these half-crazy saints at our house, and I was taught to regard them with profound respect, for which I am deeply grateful to those who brought me up. If there were some among them who were insincere, or who experienced periods of weakness and insincerity, yet the aim of their life, though practically absurd, was so lofty that I am glad I learned in childhood unconsciously to understand the height of their achievement. They accomplished what Marcus Aurelius speaks of when he says: 'There is nothing higher than to endure contempt for one's good life.' So harmful and so unavoidable is the desire for human glory which always contaminates good deeds, that one cannot but sympathise with the effort not merely to avoid praise, but even to evoke contempt. Such a character was Márya Gerásimovna, my sister's godmother, and the semi-idiot Evdokímoushka, and some others in our house.

How deeply these early impressions were engraved on Tolstoy's mind is obvious from his earliest as well as his latest writings. Take, for instance, the lines from _Childhood_ referring to Grísha's prayer overheard by the children.

Much water has flowed away since then, many recollections of the past have lost for me their meaning and become blurred fancies; even the pilgrim Grísha himself has long since finished his last pilgrimage; but the impression he produced on me and the feeling he evoked, will never die out of my memory.

In Tolstoy's later life we shall again and again find this medieval note recurring (with whatever of truth or falsity it contains), and the assertion that it is not the usefulness or uselessness of a man's life that matters, so much as his self-abnegation and the humility of his soul.

To complete the picture of Tolstoy's early boyhood at Yásnaya Polyána, we must think of him as interested in his father's dogs and horses and hunting (in _Childhood_ he tells the true story of how he hunted his first hare), and also in the games and masquerades with which the family and visitors, as well as the servants, amused themselves, especially at New Year.

In spite of his sensitive introspective nature, Tolstoy's childhood was a happy one; and to it he always looks back with pleasure. He speaks of 'that splendid, innocent, joyful, poetic period of childhood, up to fourteen,' and he tells us that the impressions of early childhood, preserved in one's memory, grow in some unfathomable depth of the soul, like seeds thrown on good ground, till after many years they thrust their bright, green shoots into God's world.

1837

When Tolstoy was eight years old the family moved to Moscow for his elder brothers' education. The following summer they lost their father, who, having gone to Toúla on business, fell down in the street on his way to visit his friend Temeshóf, and died of apoplexy. What money he had with him was stolen, but some unnegotiable bonds were brought back to the Tolstoys in Moscow by an unknown beggar. The funeral took place at Yásnaya Polyána; and Leo, who did not attend it, long fancied that his father was not really dead. Looking at the faces of strangers in the streets of Moscow, he felt almost certain he might at any moment meet him alive again.

This event brought the problems of life and death vividly to the boy's mind, and nine months later the impression was intensified by the death of his grandmother, who never recovered from the shock of her son's death. Hers was the first death Tolstoy witnessed, and he never forgot the horror he felt when, as she lay dying of dropsy, he was admitted to kiss her swollen white hand and saw her, dressed in white, lying motionless on a high white bed. But he says:

I remember that new jackets of black material, braided with white, were made for all of us. It was dreadful to see the undertakers' men hanging about near the house, and then bringing in the coffin, with its lid covered with glazed brocade, and my grandmother's stern face, with its Roman nose, and her white cap and the white kerchief on her neck, lying high in the coffin on the table; and it was sad to see the tears of our aunts and of Páshenka; but yet the new braided jackets and the soothing attitude adopted towards us by those around, gratified us.... I remember how pleasant it was to me to overhear during the funeral the conversation of some gossiping female guests, who said, 'Complete orphans; their father only lately dead, and now the grandmother gone too.'

Some time after this, an event occurred that is recorded on the first page of Tolstoy's _Confession_:

I remember how, when I was about eleven, a boy Vladímir Milútin (long since dead), a Grammar School pupil, visited us one Sunday and announced as the latest novelty a discovery made at his School. The discovery was that there is no God, and all that we are taught about Him is a mere invention. I remember how interested my elder brothers were in this news. They called me to their council and we all, I remember, became animated, and accepted the news as something very interesting and fully possible.

Various stories have been preserved relating to Tolstoy's boyhood, and some of them are sufficiently characteristic to be worth repeating.

One incident which made a strong impression on the lad, keenly sensitive as he always was to any shade of injustice, was the following:

Soon after the death of their father and grandmother, the orphan Tolstoys, then living in rather straitened circumstances (owing to the property being left in trust), were invited to a Christmas Tree at the house of an acquaintance, and the young Princes Gortchakóf, nephews of the then Minister of War, were also among the guests. All the children received presents; but whereas the Gortchakófs had expensive ones, the Tolstoys, to their annoyance, received cheap common ones.

Another occurrence that clung to his recollection through life, was the friendly welcome they received one day when they made their way uninvited into a private garden in Moscow; and the sad disappointment they experienced when, returning a few days later unaccompanied by a pretty and attractive girl who had been with them on the former occasion, they were coldly informed that it was private ground, not open to the public.

Other stories, told by Tolstoy himself or by the family, illustrate his impulsive, imaginative, strenuous and rather erratic nature at this period.

When he was about seven or eight years old he had an ardent desire to fly, and persuaded himself that it was possible to do so. It was only necessary to sit down tight on your heels, clasping your arms firmly round your knees, and the tighter you held them the higher you would fly. As Tolstoy was always ardent to put his beliefs into practice, it is not very surprising that one day, soon after the family had moved to Moscow, he stayed behind in the class-room when he should have come down to dinner, and climbing out on the window-sill, some six yards from the ground, threw himself out. He was picked up unconscious. The ill results of his fall were fortunately confined to a slight concussion of the brain; and after sleeping for eighteen hours on end he woke up again quite well.

It would be a mistake to take his story, _Childhood_, as strictly autobiographical; but it contains many passages which one knows from other sources to be true of his own life, and one such is the passage in which (speaking in the character of Nikólenka) he says:

I knew very well that I was plain, and therefore every reference to my appearance was painfully offensive to me.... Moments of despair frequently came over me: I imagined that there could be no happiness on earth for a man with so broad a nose, such thick lips, and such small grey eyes as mine. I asked God to perform a miracle and change me into a handsome boy, and all I then had and all I could ever possess in the future, I would have given for a handsome face.

In fact, his personal appearance caused the sensitive lad much concern, but his efforts to improve it were unsuccessful. On one occasion he clipped his eyebrows, and the unsatisfactory results of that operation occasioned him great grief.

He records in his Reminiscences the following incident, which certainly intensified his lifelong antipathy to corporal punishment:

I do not remember for what, but for something quite undeserving of punishment, St. Thomas [the resident French tutor who succeeded Rössel] first locked me into a room, and secondly threatened to flog me. I thereupon experienced a dreadful feeling of anger indignation and disgust, not only towards St. Thomas himself, but towards the violence with which I was threatened.

When quite a small boy he conceived an attachment for the nine-year-old daughter of his father's friend, Islényef, and being jealous of her for daring to talk to others, he angrily pushed her off a balcony, with the result that she limped for a long time afterwards. A quarter of a century later, when he married this lady's daughter, his mother-in-law used laughingly to remind him of the incident, and say, 'Evidently you pushed me off the balcony in my childhood that you might marry my daughter afterwards!'

His sister relates that once when they were driving in a troika (_i.e._ three horses abreast) to Yásnaya, Leo got down during a break in the journey and went forward on foot. When the carriage started again and began to overtake him he took to running, and when the horses went faster he also increased his speed, racing as hard as he could. He was not overtaken till he had gone about two miles and was completely tired out. He was lifted back into the carriage gasping for breath, perspiring and quite exhausted. Any one not endowed with the remarkable physical vigour that, in spite of frequent attacks of ill-health, has characterised Tolstoy through life, would probably have done themselves serious injury had they taxed their vital resources as recklessly as he often did.

All accounts agree in representing him as an original and odd little fellow, unwilling to do things like other people. He would for instance enter a drawing-room and, carefully placing his feet together and bending his head, would make his bow backwards, saluting each of the company in turn.

Two incidents are recorded relating to the love of riding which has remained a characteristic of his through life.

When his brothers were sent to a riding-school, Leo (in spite of his father's assurances and those of the riding-master that he was too small to begin and would tumble off) also obtained permission to learn to ride. At his first lesson he duly tumbled off, but begged to be replaced in the saddle; and he did not fall off again, but became an expert horseman. In one of the short stories he wrote many years later for the use of school-children, he tells how he once wished to ride the old horse Raven after his brothers had each had a turn on it; and how Raven being too tired to move from the stables, he beat it till he broke his switch on its sides. He then demanded a stouter switch from the serf in charge, but the man replied:

'Ah, master, you have no pity! Why do you beat him? He is twenty years old, and is tired out; he can hardly breathe. Why, for a horse, he is as old as Timoféyitch [a very old peasant living at the place]. You might as well get on Timoféyitch's back, and drive him beyond his strength like that, with a switch. Would you feel no pity for him?'

I thought of Timoféyitch, and hearkened to the man. I got off the horse's back; and when I noticed how its steaming sides were working, and how heavily it breathed through its nostrils, swishing its thin tail, I understood how hard it was for it. Till then I had thought that it was as happy as I was myself. And I felt so sorry for Raven that I began to kiss his sweaty neck and to beg his pardon for having beaten him.

Since then I have grown up, but I always have pity on horses, and always remember Raven and Timoféyitch when I see horses ill-treated.

He does not appear to have been very good at his lessons, and himself somewhere mentions the dictum of a student who used to coach his brothers and himself, and said of their aptitude for learning:

'Sergéy both wishes and can, Dmítry wishes but can't' (this was not true), 'and Leo neither wishes nor can.' (This, I think, was perfectly true.)

On the other hand, St. Thomas, the French tutor already referred to (he figures in _Childhood_ as St. Jérôme), must have noticed the lad's capacity, for he used to say, '_Ce petit a une tête: c'est un petit Molière_' (This little one has a head: he is a little Molière).

1837

After the father's death the family property passed under the control of the Court of Wards, and expenses had to be cut down. It was therefore decided that, though the two elder brothers had to remain in Moscow for the sake of their education, the three younger children should return to Yásnaya Polyána, where living was cheaper, in charge of their much loved Aunty Tatiána. Their legal guardian, the Countess Alexandra ('Aline') Ilýnishna Osten-Saken, remained in Moscow with the elder boys.

This lady had made what seemed a brilliant marriage with the wealthy Count Osten-Saken, whose family was among the first in the Baltic Provinces; but her married life was a terrible one. Her husband went out of his mind and tried to kill her. While he was confined in an asylum, the Countess gave birth to a still-born child. To save her from this fresh shock, a girl born of a servant, the wife of a Court cook, was substituted for the still-born baby. This girl, Páshenka, lived with the Tolstoy family, and was already grown up when Tolstoy was quite a child. Subsequently the Countess Alexandra lived first with her parents and then with her brother, Tolstoy's father. Though she was a devotee of the Orthodox Russo-Greek Church of which Tolstoy eventually became so fierce an opponent, much in her character and conduct accords with the precepts laid down in his later writings; and it is evident that certain aspects of his understanding of the Christian character, which strike most Englishmen as peculiar, far from being invented out of his own head, are derived from a deeply-rooted Russian and family tradition. He tells us:

My aunt was a truly religious woman. Her favourite occupation was reading the Lives of the Saints, conversing with pilgrims, half-crazy devotees, monks and nuns, of whom some always lived in our house, while others only visited my aunt.... She was not merely outwardly religious, keeping the fasts, praying much, and associating with people of saintly life, but she herself lived a truly Christian life, trying not only to avoid all luxury and acceptance of service, but herself serving others as much as possible. She never had any money, for she gave away all she had to those who asked. A servant related to me how, during their life in Moscow, my aunt used carefully on tip-toe to pass her sleeping maid, when going to Matins, and used herself to perform all the duties which it was in those days customary for a maid to perform. In food and dress she was as simple and unexacting as can possibly be imagined. Unpleasant as it is to me to mention it, I remember from childhood a specific acid smell connected with my aunt, probably due to negligence in her toilet: and this was the graceful poetic Aline with beautiful blue eyes, who used to love reading and copying French verses, who played on the harp, and always had great success at the grandest balls! I remember how affectionate and kind she always was, and this equally to the most important men and women and to the nuns and pilgrims.

Tolstoy goes on to tell how pleasantly she bore the jests and teasing that her devotion to the priests brought upon her.

I remember her dear good-natured laugh, and her face shining with pleasure. The religious feeling which filled her soul was evidently so important to her, so much higher than anything else, that she could not be angry or annoyed at anything, and could not attribute to worldly matters the importance others attach to them.

1840

In the summer of 1839 the whole family assembled at Yásnaya Polyána. The next year, 1840, was a famine year. The crops were so poor that corn had to be bought to feed the serfs, and to raise funds for this purpose one of the Tolstoys' estates had to be sold. The supply of oats for the horses was stopped, and Tolstoy remembers how he and his brothers, pitying their ponies, secretly gathered oats for them in the peasants' fields, quite unconscious of the crime they were committing.

1841

In the autumn of that year the whole family moved to Moscow, returning to Yásnaya for the following summer. The next autumn their guardian, the kind good Countess Alexandra Osten-Saken, died in the Convent or 'Hermitage' founded by Óptin (a robber chief of the fourteenth century) in the Government of Kaloúga, to which she had retired.

After her death her sister, Pelagéya Ilýnishna Úshkof, became their guardian. She was the wife of a Kazán landowner. Aunty Tatiána and she were not on friendly terms; there was no open quarrel between them, but V. I. Úshkof (Pelagéya's husband) had been a suitor for Tatiána's hand in his youth, and had been refused. Pelagéya could not forgive her husband's old love for Tatiána.

The change of guardianship led to the removal of the family to Kazán, and to the children being separated from Aunty Tatiána, much to her grief.

The books which up to the age of fourteen, when he went to Kazán, had most influenced Tolstoy were, he tells us, the Story of Joseph from the Bible, the _Forty Thieves_ and _Prince Kamaralzaman_ from the _Arabian Nights_, various Russian folk-legends, Poúshkin's _Tales_ and his poem _Napoleon_, and _The Black Hen_ by Pogorélsky. The influence the story of Joseph had on him, he says, was 'immense.'

In his aptitude for abstract speculation, as in other respects, the boy was truly father to the man; and in a passage, certainly autobiographical, in _Boyhood_, he says:

It will hardly be believed what were the favourite and most common subjects of my reflections in my boyhood--so incompatible were they with my age and situation. But in my opinion incompatibility between a man's position and his moral activity is the surest sign of truth....

At one time the thought occurred to me that happiness does not depend on external causes, but on our relation to them; and that a man accustomed to bear suffering cannot be unhappy. To accustom myself therefore to endurance, I would hold Tatíshef's dictionaries in my outstretched hand for five minutes at a time, though it caused me terrible pain; or I would go to the lumber room and flog myself on my bare back with a cord so severely that tears started to my eyes.

At another time suddenly remembering that death awaits me every hour and every minute, I decided (wondering why people had not understood this before) that man can only be happy by enjoying the present and not thinking of the future; and for three days, under the influence of this thought, I abandoned my lessons, and did nothing but lie on my bed and enjoy myself, reading a novel and eating honey-gingerbreads, on which I spent my last coins....

But no philosophic current swayed me so much as scepticism, which at one time brought me to the verge of insanity. I imagined that except myself no one and nothing existed in the world, that objects are not objects but apparitions, appearing only when I pay attention to them and disappearing as soon as I cease to think of them. In a word, I coincided with Schelling in the conviction that what exists is not objects, but only my relation to them. There were moments in which under the influence of this fixed idea, I reached such a stage of absurdity that I glanced quickly round hoping to catch Nothingness by surprise, there where I was not.

The philosophical discoveries I made greatly flattered my vanity: I often imagined myself a great man, discovering new truths for the benefit of humanity, and I looked on other mortals with a proud consciousness of my own dignity; yet, strange to say, when I came in contact with these mortals I grew timid before each of them. The higher I stood in my own opinion the less was I able to show any consciousness of my own dignity before others, or even to avoid being ashamed of every word or movement of my own--even the simplest.

At the time of the move to Kazán, a serf lad of about his own age was presented to each of the young Tolstoys to attend on him. Alexis, the one given to Leo Tolstoy, remained in his service all his life, and died at Yásnaya a few years ago.

1841

For five and a half years, from the autumn of 1841 to the spring of 1847, the brothers lived at Kazán, returning each summer to Yásnaya for the vacation. They all entered Kazán University. The aunt who was their guardian, and with whom they lived the greater part of the time, was a kind but not particularly clever woman. Her house was the centre of much hospitality and gaiety.

1844

Leo Tolstoy prepared to enter the faculty of Oriental Languages, in which a knowledge of Arabic and Turco-Tartar was required. He worked hard, and matriculated in May 1844 before he was sixteen, passing in French (for which he received the mark 5+; 5 being in an ordinary way the highest mark, and the + indicating exceptional distinction), German, Arabic, and Turco-Tartar very well, and in English, Logic, Mathematics and Russian Literature, well; but he did indifferently in Latin, and failed completely in History and Geography, getting the lowest mark, a 1, for each of them. Of History he says, 'I knew nothing,' and of Geography 'still less'; adding, 'I was asked to name the French seaports, but I could not name a single one.' At the end of the summer vacation he was admitted for re-examination in the subjects in which he had failed, and passed successfully.

1844-1845

The winter season when Tolstoy, as a student at the University and a young man of good position, entered Kazán society, was a particularly gay one. He attended many balls, given by the Governor of the Province, by the _Maréchal de la Noblesse_, and by private people, as well as many masquerades, concerts, tableaux-vivants, and private theatricals. He is still remembered by old inhabitants as having been 'present at all the balls, soirées, and aristocratic parties, a welcome guest everywhere, and always dancing, but, far from being a ladies' man, he was distinguished by a strange awkwardness and shyness.' At Carnival time in 1845 he and his brother Sergius took parts in two plays given for some charitable object. His performance was a great success.

As to the nature of Kazán society and of his surroundings there, accounts are contradictory. On the one hand, we have his own statement that (imitating his brother Sergius in this as in other matters) he became 'depraved.' Birukóf, too, speaks of 'the detestable surroundings of Tolstoy's life in Kazán,' and another writer, Zagóskin, a fellow-student of Tolstoy's at the University, says that the surroundings in which the latter moved were demoralising and must have been repellent to him. On the other hand, on seeing Zagóskin's remarks, Tolstoy (in whom there is often observable a strong spirit of contradiction) replied:

I did not feel any repulsion, but was very glad to enjoy myself in Kazán society, which was then very good. I am on the contrary thankful to fate that I passed my first youth in an environment where a young man could be young without touching problems beyond his grasp, and that I lived a life which, though idle and luxurious, was yet not evil.

The explanation of these contradictions, no doubt, is that the family circle in which Tolstoy lived was an affectionate one, and that he himself not only enjoyed his life, but formed friendships and made efforts at which in later years he looked back with satisfaction. Yet there was assuredly much in his life and in the life around him which (except when others were severe on it) he recalled with grave disapproval, a disapproval he has plainly expressed in his _Confession_.

To come as near as we may to the truth, we must allow for the personal equation which, in Tolstoy's case, is violent and fluctuating.

With constant amusements going on around him, it is not surprising that at the end of his first University year he failed in his examinations. The failure does not however appear to have been entirely his fault, for he tells us:

Ivanóf, Professor of Russian History, prevented me from passing to the second course (though I had not missed a single lecture and knew Russian History quite well) because he had quarrelled with my family. The same Professor also gave me the lowest mark--a 'one'--for German, though I knew the language incomparably better than any student in our division.

1845

Instead of remaining for a second year in the first course of Oriental Languages, Tolstoy preferred to leave that faculty, and in August 1845 he entered the faculty of Law. During the first months of this new course he hardly studied at all, throwing himself more than ever into the gay life of Kazán society. Before midwinter however he began for the first time, as he tells us, 'to study seriously, and I even found a certain pleasure in so doing.' Comparative Jurisprudence and Criminal Law interested him, and his attention was especially arrested by a discussion on Capital Punishment. Meyer, Professor of Civil Law, set him a task which quite absorbed him; it was the comparison of Montesquieu's _Esprit des Lois_ with Catherine the Second's _Great Nakaz_. The conclusion to which he came was, that in Catherine's _Nakaz_ one finds Montesquieu's Liberal ideas mixed with the expression of Catherine's own despotism and vanity, and that the _Nakaz_ brought more fame to Catherine than good to Russia.

1846

He passed his examinations successfully in May 1846, and was duly admitted to the second year's course of Jurisprudence. Some time previously Tolstoy and another student had disputed which of them had the better memory, and to test this, each of them learnt by heart the reply to one examination question in History. Tolstoy's task was to learn the life of Mazeppa, and as luck would have it that was just the question he happened to draw at his examination, so that he naturally obtained a 5, the highest mark.

From the autumn of 1846 the three brothers, Sergius Demetrius and Leo, ceased to live at their aunt's, and settled in a flat of their own, consisting of five rooms.

A fellow-student, Nazáryef, has given us his impression of Tolstoy as a student. He says:

I kept clear of the Count, who from our first meeting repelled me by his assumption of coldness, his bristly hair and the piercing expression of his half-closed eyes. I had never met a young man with such a strange and, to me, incomprehensible air of importance and self-satisfaction....

At first I seldom met the Count, who in spite of his awkwardness and bashfulness had joined the small group of so-called 'aristocrats.' He hardly replied to my greetings, as if wishing to intimate that even here we were far from being equals, since he drove up with a fast trotter and I came on foot....

It so happened that Nazáryef and Tolstoy were both late for a lecture on History one day, and were incarcerated together by order of the Inspector.

One gathers that Tolstoy was in those days particularly careful of his personal appearance, his clothes indicating his aristocratic pretensions. But though externally the Tolstoy of 1846 differed greatly from the Tolstoy of forty years later, his conversation ran on much the same lines as in later life, and was uttered with the intensity of conviction and the flashes of dry humour which have since made even the most didactic of his writings so readable.

Their conversation in their place of confinement having led to some mention of Lérmontof's poem, _The Demon_, Tolstoy took occasion to speak ironically of verse generally, and then, noticing a volume his companion had of Karamzín's _History of Russia_, he

attacked History as the dullest and almost the most useless of subjects. A collection of fables and useless details, sprinkled with a mass of unnecessary figures and proper names.... Who wants to know that the second marriage of John the Terrible, with Temrúk's daughter, took place on 21st August 1562; and his fourth marriage, with Anna Alexéyevna Koltórsky, in 1572? Yet they expect me to grind all this, and if I don't, the examiner gives me a 'one.'

Later on, says Nazáryef, 'the, to me, irresistible force of Tolstoy's doubts fell upon the University, and on University teaching in general. The phrase, "The Temple of Science," was constantly on his lips. Remaining perfectly serious himself, he portrayed our professors in such a comical light that, in spite of all my efforts to appear indifferent, I laughed like one possessed.... "Yet," said Tolstoy, "we both had a right to expect that we should leave this temple useful men, equipped with knowledge. But what shall we really carry away from the University?... What shall we be good for, and to whom shall we be necessary?"

Nazáryef says that in spite of the feeling half of dislike, half of perplexity, that Tolstoy evoked in him, he well remembers that he was dimly conscious of something remarkable, exceptional, and at the same time inexplicable, about him.

From the educational articles Tolstoy wrote sixteen years later, we know that he disapproved of examinations, of the restricted groove of studies marked out for the students in each faculty, and of the system which made it necessary for the professors to deliver original lectures of their own, and obliged the students to listen to those lectures and to study them, however incompetent the professors might be.

1847

The fact that his brother Sergius had finished his studies and was leaving, strengthened Tolstoy's dissatisfaction with the University; and finally, without waiting for the May examinations at which he might have qualified for the third year's course, we find him, soon after Easter 1847, applying to have his name removed from the University roll 'on account of ill-health and family affairs.' He really had been in hospital in March, but the plea of ill-health was a mere excuse.

His failure to take a degree was a source of great annoyance and disappointment to him, and it must not be supposed that he left Kazán with any idea of taking life easily or neglecting further study.

From the time he was a boy he had kept a diary of every little sin he had committed, and especially of any offence against the Seventh Commandment, in order that he might repent, and if possible refrain for the future, and his diary shows how full he was at this time of strenuous resolutions. During the last year of his life at Kazán he made close friends with a student named Dyákof (the Nehlúdof of _Boyhood_), and under his influence had developed

an ecstatic worship of the ideal of virtue, and the conviction that it is man's destiny continually to perfect himself. To put all mankind right and to destroy all human vices and misfortunes, appeared a matter that could well be accomplished. It seemed quite easy and simple to put oneself right, to acquire all the virtues, and to be happy.

Here are some rules he set himself at that time:

1. To fulfil what I set myself, despite all obstacles.

2. To fulfil well what I do undertake.

3. Never to refer to a book for what I have forgotten, but always to try to recall it to mind myself.

4. Always to make my mind work with its utmost power.

5. Always to read and think aloud.

6. Not to be ashamed of telling people who interrupt me, that they are hindering me: letting them first feel it, but (if they do not understand) telling them, with an apology.

Deciding to settle at Yásnaya for two years, he drew up a list of studies he intended to pursue for his own mental development, and to qualify for a University degree; and this list was, as the reader will see, appalling in its scope.

1. To study the whole course of law necessary to get my degree.

2. To study practical medicine, and to some extent its theory also.

3. To study: French, Russian, German, English, Italian, and Latin.

4. To study agriculture, theoretically and practically.

5. To study History, Geography, and Statistics.

6. To study Mathematics (the High School course).

7. To write my [University] thesis.

8. To reach the highest perfection I can in music and painting.

9. To write down rules (for my conduct).

10. To acquire some knowledge of the natural sciences, and,

11. To write essays on all the subjects I study.

Such rules and resolutions abound in Tolstoy's Diary. After failing to act up to them, he again and again gathers his energies and maps out for himself plans of life and courses of study sufficient to tax the energies of an intellectual giant.

As to his religious opinions at this time, he tells us:

I was baptized and brought up in the Orthodox Christian faith. I was taught it in childhood and all through my boyhood and youth. But before I left the University, in my second year, at the age of eighteen, I no longer believed anything I had been taught. (_Confession._)

His Diary nevertheless shows that he prayed frequently and earnestly; the fact no doubt being, that though intellectually he discarded the Orthodox Russo-Greek Church, in times of trouble or distress he instinctively appealed to God for help. His opinions were wavering and immature, as he himself tells us in another passage:

The religious beliefs taught me in childhood disappeared... and as from the time I was fifteen I began to read philosophic works, my rejection of those beliefs very soon became a conscious one. From the age of sixteen I ceased going to Church and fasting of my own accord. I did not believe what had been taught me from childhood, but I believed in something. What it was I believed in, I could not at all have said. I believed in a God, or rather I did not deny God; but I could not have said what sort of God. Neither did I deny Christ and his teaching, but what his teaching consisted in I could also not have said.

Looking back on that time now, I see clearly that my faith--my only real faith, that which apart from my animal instincts gave impulse to my life--was a belief in perfecting oneself. But in what this perfecting consisted and what its object was, I could not have said. I tried to perfect myself mentally--I studied everything I could: anything life threw in my way; I tried to perfect my will, I drew up rules which I tried to follow; I perfected myself physically, cultivating my strength and agility by all sorts of exercises and accustoming myself to endurance and patience by all kinds of privations. And all this I considered to be perfecting myself. The beginning of it all was, of course, moral perfecting; but that was soon replaced by perfecting in general: by the desire to be better, not in one's own eyes or those of God, but in the eyes of other people. And very soon this effort again changed into a desire to be stronger than others: to be more famous, more important and richer than others. (_Confession._)

When speaking of Tolstoy's relations with women, it should be borne in mind that incontinence for young men was then considered so natural that few of them in his position would have felt any serious qualms of conscience about such visits to houses of ill-fame as he lets us know that he began to pay at this time. His brother Dmítry however led a chaste life, and alternating with gross lapses of conduct, we find Leo noting down for his own guidance such resolutions as the following:

To regard the society of women as a necessary unpleasantness of social life, and to keep away from them as much as possible. From whom indeed do we get sensuality, effeminacy, frivolity in everything, and many other vices, if not from women? Whose fault is it, if not women's, that we lose our innate qualities of boldness, resolution, reasonableness, justice, etc.? Women are more receptive than men, therefore in virtuous ages women were better than we; but in the present depraved and vicious age they are worse than we are.

During his years at the University, Tolstoy saw much of his brother Dmítry, of whom he says:

I remember also at the University that when my elder brother Dmítry, suddenly in the passionate way natural to him devoted himself to religion and began to attend all the Church services, to fast, and to lead a pure and moral life, we all, and even our elders, unceasingly held him up to ridicule and called him, for some unknown reason, 'Noah.' I remember that Moúsin-Poúshkin (then Curator of Kazán University), when inviting us to a dance at his house, ironically remonstrated with my brother, who had declined the invitation, and used the argument that even David danced before the Ark. I sympathised with these jokes my elders made, and deduced from them the conclusion that though it is necessary to learn the catechism and go to church, one must not take such things too seriously. (_Confession._)

Again we read of this brother:

His peculiarities became manifest, and are impressed on my mind from the time of our life at Kazán. Formerly in Moscow I remember that he did not fall in love, as Seryózha and I did, and was not fond of dancing or of military pageants, but studied well and strenuously.... At Kazán I, who had always imitated Seryózha, began to grow depraved.... Not only at Kazán, but even earlier, I used to take pains about my appearance. I tried to be elegant, _comme il faut_. There was no trace of anything of this kind in Mítenka. I think he never suffered from the usual vices of youth; he was always serious thoughtful pure and resolute, though hot-tempered, and whatever he did, he did to the best of his ability.... He wrote verses with great facility. I remember how admirably he translated Schiller's _Der Jüngling am Bache_, but he did not devote himself to this occupation.... He grew up associating little with others, always--except in his moments of anger--quiet and serious. He was tall, rather thin, and not very strong, with long, large hands and round shoulders. I do not know how or by what he was attracted at so early an age towards a religious life, but it began in the very first year of his University career. His religious aspirations naturally directed him to Church life, and he devoted himself to this with his usual thoroughness.

In Mítenka there must have existed that valuable characteristic which I believe my mother to have had, and which I knew in Nikólenka, but of which I was altogether devoid--complete indifference to other people's opinion about oneself. Until quite lately (in old age) I have never been able to divest myself of concern about people's opinion; but Mítenka was quite free from this. I never remember on his face that restrained smile which involuntarily appears when one is being praised. I always remember his serious quiet sad, sometimes severe, almond-shaped hazel eyes. Only in our Kazán days did we begin to pay particular attention to him, and then merely because, while Seryózha and I attached great importance to what was _comme il faut_--to externalities--he was careless and untidy, and we condemned him for this.

We others, especially Seryózha, kept up acquaintance with our aristocratic comrades and other young men. Mítenka on the contrary selected out of all the students a piteous-looking, poor, shabbily dressed youth, Poluboyárinof [which may be translated Half-noble]--whom a humorous fellow-student of ours called Polubezobédof [Half-dinnerless]--and consorted only with him, and with him prepared for the examinations.... We brothers, and even our aunt, looked down on Mítenka with a certain contempt for his low tastes and associates; and the same attitude was adopted by our frivolous comrades.

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

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

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

Tolstoy continues:

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

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

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

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

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

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

which all had an 'immense' influence on him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1848

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: TOLSTOY IN 1848, AFTER HE HAD LEFT THE UNIVERSITY.]

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

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

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

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

Before long, Tolstoy was again writing to his brother:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1849

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

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

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

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

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

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

1850-1851

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

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

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

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

1851

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHIEF AUTHORITIES FOR CHAPTER II

Birukof.

Behrs.

_Novy Mir._

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

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

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

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

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

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

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