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"I was born and I spent my earliest childhood in the village Yasnaya Polyana."
With these words Tolstoy opens his Reminiscences, and before we begin the description of his childhood we think it well to say a few words about this little corner of the earth, destined to become of world-wide interest. What a variety of visitors have called at Yasnaya Polyana! Natives of the Malay Archipelago, Australians, Japanese and Americans, Siberian runaways, and representatives of all the European nations, have visited this village and spread abroad a description of it, as well as the words and thoughts of the aged prophet, its inhabitant.
Yasnaya Polyana, the family estate of the Princes Volkonsky, is situated in the Krapivensk district of the province of Tula, almost on the border line of the district of Tula, fifteen versts to the south of the town of the same name. Three high-roads of three different periods cross one another in its neighborhood; the old Kiev road, overgrown with grass, the new Kiev macadamized road, and the Moscow-Kursk Railway line, the nearest station of which, Kozlovka-Zasseka, is at three and a half versts distance from Tolstoy's home.
The beautiful hilly neighborhood surrounding Yasnaya Polyana is divided from east to west by a long belt of Crown forest, called the Abattis. This name points back to ancient times when in that place the Slavs had to repel the attacks of the Crimean Tartars and other Mongolian tribes, and were obliged to cut trees and make barriers which formed a natural and impenetrable defence against the enemies' hordes.
The house in which Tolstoy was born no longer stands in Yasnaya Polyana. The work of building it was started by his grandfather, Prince Volkonsky, and finished by his father; after which the house was sold to a neighboring landowner, Gorokhov, and was removed to the village Dolgoye, where it now stands. It was in the early 1850s, when Tolstoy was in great need of money, that he requested one of his relatives to sell this house. The large-sized residence with columns and balconies was sold for the comparatively insignificant price of about five thousand rubles in paper money. From Tolstoy's letters to his brother it is evident that he was very sorry to part with it, and only dire necessity induced him to do so. At present nobody lives in it. It stands neglected, with its window-shutters nailed up. The present two houses of Yasnaya Polyana consist of the two wings, formerly standing at the sides of the main body of the old house which was sole. The place occupied by the old house is partly planted with trees, partly cleared and turned into a croquet ground and a small square which is used as a dining-place when weather permits.
In front of the house there is at present a flower-bed, and beyond that spreads an old garden with ponds and aged lime-tree avenues. The garden is surrounded by a ditch and a rampart. At the entrance of this garden stand two brick towers, painted white. Old people say that in the time of the grandfather, Prince Volkonsky, sentries used to stand there. A birch avenue, the so-called "Prospect," begins at the towers and leads up to the house.
To the old garden are added new fruit gardens planted under Tolstoy's own supervision. The whole residence is situated on rising ground and surrounded by a luxurious growth of shrubs.
It is unfortunate that there exist no details of interest relating to Tolstoy's birth besides the following extract from the church register, quoted by Zagoskin in his reminiscences:
"In the year 1828, on August 28, in the village of Yasnaya Polyana, a son, Lev, was born to Count Nikolay Ilich Tolstoy and baptized on the 29th of August by the priest Vasiliy Mozhaiskiy, deacon Arkhip Ivanov, chanter Aleksandr Feodorov, and sexton Feodor Grigoriyev. The sponsors at the baptism were the landowner of the Belevsky district, Simon Ivanovich Yazikov, and Countess Pelageya Tolstova."1
The countess Pelageya Tolstova was in fact the grandmother of Lev Tolstoy on his father's side, Pelageya Nikolayevna Tolstaya.
It is seldom that a biographer has the good fortune to learn facts of such an early age. In his First Memories, Tolstoy relates his vague sensations on being swathed, sensations, that is, felt during the first year of his life.
We quote these reminiscences as they stand:
"Here are my first reminiscences, which I am unable to arrange in order, not knowing what came before and what after; of some of them I do not even know whether they happened in reality or in a dream. Here they are: I am bound; I wish to free my arms and I cannot do it and I scream and cry, and my cries are unpleasant to myself, but I cannot cease. Somebody bends down over me, I do not remember who. All is in a half light. But I remember that there are two people. My cries affect them; they are disturbed by my cries, but do not unbind me as I desire, and I cry yet louder. They think that this is necessary (i.e. that I should be bound), whereas I know it is not necessary and I wish to prove it to them, and am convulsed with cries distasteful to myself but unrestrainable. I feel the injustice and cruelty, not of human beings, for they pity me, but of fate, and I feel pity for myself. I do not and never shall know what it was, whether I was swathed when a babe at the breast and tried to get my arm free, or whether I was swathed when more than a year old, in order that I should not scratch myself; or whether, as it happens in dreams, I have collected into this one reminiscence many impressions; but certain it is that this was my first and most powerful impression in life. Nor is it my cries that are impressed upon my mind, nor my sufferings, but the complexity and contrast of the impression. I desire freedom, it interferes with no one else, and I, who require strength, am weak, whilst they are strong.
"Another impression is a joyful one. I am sitting in a wooden trough, and am enveloped by the new and not unpleasant smell of some kind of stuff with which my little body is being rubbed. It was probably bran, and most likely I was having a bath, but the novelty of the impression from the bran aroused me, and for the first time I remarked and liked my little body with the ribs showing on the breast, and the smooth, dark-colored trough, my nurse's rolled-up sleeves, and the warm steaming bran-water, and its sound, and especially the feeling of the smoothness of the trough's edges when I passed my little hands along them.
"It is strange and dreadful to think that from my birth until the age of three years, during the time when I was fed from the breast, when I was weaned, when I began to crawl, to walk, to speak, however much I may seek them in my memory, I can find no other impressions save these two: When did I originate? When did I begin to live? And why is it joyous to me to imagine myself as at that time, and yet has been dreadful to me, as it is still dreadful to many, to imagine myself again entering that state of death of which there will be no recollections that can be expressed in words? Was I not alive when I learned to look, to listen, to understand, and to speak, when I slept, took the breast, kissed it, and laughed and gladdened my mother? I lived, and lived blissfully! Did I not then acquire all that by which I now live, and acquire it to such an extent and so quickly, that in all the rest of my life I have not acquired a hundredth part of the amount? From a five-year-old child to my present self there is only one step. From a new-born infant to a five-year-old child there is an awesome distance. From the germ to the infant an unfathomable distance. But from non-existence to the germ the distance is not only unfathomable, but inconceivable. Not only are space and time and causation forms of thought, and not only is the essence of life outside these forms, but all our life is a greater and greater subjection of oneself to these forms, and then again liberation from them.
"The next reminiscences refer to the time when I was already four or five years old, but of these I have very few, and not one of them concerns life outside the walls of the house. Nature, up to five years old, did not exist for me. All that I remember takes place in my little bed in a room. Neither grass nor leaves nor sky nor sun exists for me. It cannot be that I was not given flowers or leaves to play with, that I did not see the grass, was not shaded from the sun; still, up to five or six years, I have no recollection of what we call nature. Probably one has to leave it in order to see it, and I was nature itself.
"After that of the trough, the next reminiscence is one about `Yeremeyevna.' `Yeremeyevna' was a word with which we children were threatened, but my recollection of it is this: I am in my little bed, happy and content as always, and I should not remember this were it not that my nurse, or some person who formed part of my childish world, says something in a voice new to me, and goes away, and, besides being merry, I become afraid. And I call to mind that I am not alone, but with some one else who is like myself; this probably was my sister Mashenka, a year younger than myself, whose bed stood in the same room as mine. I recall that my bed has a curtain, and my sister and I are happy, and afraid of something extraordinary which has happened among us, and I hide under my pillow, both hide and watch the door, from which I expect something new and amusing, and we laugh and hide and wait. And lo! there appears some one in a dress and cap quite unlike anything I have ever seen, but I recognize that it is the same person who is always with me (whether my nurse or my aunt I do not know), and in a gruff voice which I recognize, this some one says something dreadful about naughty children and "Yeremeyevna." I shriek with fear and joy, and am indeed horrified and yet delighted to be horrified, and I wish the one who is frightening me not to know I have recognized her. We quiet down, but then purposely begin whispering to each other to recall `Yeremeyevna.'
"I have another recollection of `Yeremeyevna,' probably of a later period, for it is more distinct, although it has forever remained incomprehensible to me. In this reminiscence the chief part is played by the German, Feodor Ivanovich, our tutor; but I know for certain that I am not yet under his supervision; therefore that this takes place before I am five. And this is my first impression of Feodor Ivanovich, and it happened so early that I do not as yet remember any one, neither my brothers nor my father. If I have an idea of any separate person, it is only my sister, and that simply because she is, like me, afraid of `Yeremeyevna.' With this reminiscence is connected my first recognition that our house has a second story. How I got up there, whether I mounted alone or was carried up, I don't at all remember, but I remember that there were many of us, and that we were all moving in a circle, holding each other's hands. Among us there were women, strangers to us (I somehow remember that they were washerwomen), and we all begin to circle round and jump, and Feodor Ivanovich jumps, lifting his legs too high, flinging about and making a great noise, and I feel at one and the same moment that this is not right, and that it is wicked, and I rebuke him, and I think I begin to cry, and everything ceases."
The account given by Marie, Tolstoy's sister, of their childish games belongs to this period.
"Three of us slept in the same room - I, Lyovochka, and Dunechka2 - and we often played with one another, making a children's party apart from our elder brothers, who lived with the tutor downstairs.
"`Milashki' was one of our favorite games. One of us would pretend to be the `milashki,' i.e., a child who was specially petted by others, put to bed, fed, given medical treatment, and generally made much fuss about. This `milashki' (favorite), according to the rules of the game, had to submit without complaining to all the tricks that were played with him, and to act his part submissively.
"I remember how grieved and vexed we were during the game when our `milashki' (generally Lev Nikolayevich) really fell asleep after having been put to bed. According to the rules of the game, he had to cry, then to be doctored, given medicine, rubbed, etc. And thus his sleep put an end to our play, and called us back from illusions to reality.
"This is all I remember till I was five years old," continues Tolstoy. "As for my nurses, my aunts, brothers, sisters, father, the rooms, and the playthings--of all these I remember nothing. My definite reminiscences commence from the time when I was transferred downstairs to Feodor Ivanovich and my elder brothers.
"With Feodor Ivanovich and the boys I experienced for the first time, and therefore more powerfully than ever after, that feeling which is called the feeling of duty--the feeling of the Cross, which every man is called to bear. I was sorry to abandon what I was used to (used to from eternity), I was sorry, poetically sorry, to separate not so much from persons, from my sister, my nurse, and my aunt, as from my little bed, with its curtain and the pillow, and I was afraid of the new life into which I entered. I tried to find what was joyful in the new life which confronted me; I tried to believe the caressing words with which Feodor Ivanovich sought to attract me; I tried not to see the contempt with which the boys received me, the younger one; I tried to think that it was shameful for a big boy to live with girls, and that there was nothing good in the upstairs life with the nurse. But inwardly I felt dreadfully sad, I knew that I was irretrievably losing innocence and happiness, and only the feeling of self-respect, the consciousness that I was fulfilling my duty, supported me. Many times later on I had to live through such moments at the parting of the ways in life, when I entered on a new road. I experienced a quiet grief at the irretrievableness of what was being lost, I kept disbelieving that it was really happening. Although I had been told that I was to be transferred to the boys, yet I remember that the dressing-gown, with belt sewn to the back, which was put on me, cut me off as it were forever from upstairs, and then for the first time I was impressed, not by all those with whom I had lived upstairs, but by the principal person with whom I lived and whom I did not previously understand. This was my aunt, Tatyana Aleksandrovna. I remember a short, stout, black-haired, kind, affectionate, solicitous woman. She put the dressing-gown on to me, and tightened the belt while embracing and kissing me, and I saw that she felt as I did; that it was sad--dreadfully sad--but necessary. For the first time I felt that life was not a plaything, but a difficult task. Shall I not feel the same when I am dying? I shall understand that death or future life is not a plaything, but a difficult task."3
Of this aunt, Tatyana Aleksandrovna, Tolstoy gives the following interesting information in his Memoirs:
"The third person, after my father and mother, as regards influence upon my life, was my `Aunty,' as we called her, Tatyana Aleksandrovna Yergolskaya. She was a very distant relation of my grandmother through the Gorchakovs. She and her sister Lisa, who afterward married Count Peter Ivanovich Tolstoy, remained poor little orphan girls after the death of their parents. There were also several brothers whom my parents managed to get adopted. But it was decided that one of the girls should be taken to be educated by Tatyana Semyonovna Skuratov, powerful, important, famous in her time and circle of the Chern district, and the other by my grandmother. Scraps of paper were folded and put under the icons, and after prayer they were chosen, when Lizenka fell to the lot of Tatyana Semyonovna, and the little dark one (Tanichka) to my grandmother. Tanichka, as we called her, was of the same age as my father. She was born in 1795, was brought up exactly in equal lines with my aunts, and was tenderly loved by all; and indeed it was impossible not to love her for her firm, resolute, energetic, and at the same time self-sacrificing character, a character very well displayed in an incident with a ruler, about which she used to tell us, showing the scar of a burn on her arm, almost as big as the palm of the hand, between the elbow and the wrist. The children had been reading the story of Mucius Scaevola, and they disputed as to whether any of them could make up his mind to do the same. `I will do it,' she said. `You will not,' said Yazikov, my godfather, and also characteristically to himself he burned a ruler on a candle, so that it became charred and smoked all over. `There, place this on your arm,' he said. She stretched out her white arm (at that time girls were always dressed decollete) and Yazikov applied the charred ruler. She frowned, but did not withdraw her arm; she groaned only when the ruler with the skin was torn away. When the older people saw her wound and asked how it was caused, she said she had done it herself, wishing to experience what Mucius Scaevola had done.
"So resolute and self-sacrificing was she in everything.
"She must have been very attractive, with her crisp, black, curling hair in its enormous plait, her jet black eyes, and vivacious, energetic expression. V. Yushkov, the husband of my Aunt Pelageya Ilyinishna, a great flirt, even when an old man, used often, when recalling her, to say with the feeling with which those who have been in love speak about the object of their previous affections: `Toinette, oh! elle etait charmante!'4
"When I remember her she was more than forty, and I never thought about her being pretty or not pretty. I simply loved her--loved her eyes, her smile, and her dusky, broad little hand with its energetic little cross vein.
"She probably loved my father and my father loved her, but she did not marry him in youth, in order that he might marry my rich mother, and later she did not marry him because she did not wish to spoil her pure poetic relations with him and us. In her papers, in a little beaded portfolio, there lies the following note, written in 1836, six years after my mother's death:
"`16th August, 1836.--Nicolas m'a fait aujourd'hui une etrange proposition--celle de l'epouser, de serivr de mere a ses enfants et de ne jamais les quitter. J'ai refuse la premiere proposition, j'ai promis de remplir l'autre tant que je vivrai.'5
"Thus she recorded, but she never spoke of this either to us or to any one. After my father's death she fulfilled his second desire. We had two aunts and a grandmother; they all had more right to us than Tatyana Aleksandrovna--whom we called aunt only by habit, for our kinship was so distant that I could never remember it--but she, by right of love to us, like Buddha with the wounded swan, took the first place in our bringing up. And this we felt.
"I had fits of passionately tender love for her.
"I remember how once on the sofa in the drawing-room, when I was about five, I squeezed in behind her, and she caressingly touched me with her hand. I caught this hand and began to kiss it and to cry from tender love toward her.
"She had been educated like a young lady of a rich house; she spoke and wrote French better than Russian, and played the piano admirably, but for thirty years she did not touch it. She resumed playing only when I had grown up and learned to play, and sometimes in playing duets she astonished me by the correctness and refinement of her performance. Toward the servants she was kind; she never spoke to them angrily and could not bear the idea of blows or flogging, yet she regarded serfs as serfs and treated them as their superior. Notwithstanding this, all the servants distinguished her from others and loved her. When she died and was being borne through the village, peasants came out from all the houses and paid for Te Deums. Her principal characteristic was love, but how I could wish that this had not been all for one person--for my father. Still, starting from this center her love spread on all around. We felt that she loved us for his sake, that through him she loved every one, because all her life was love.
"She, owing to her love for us, had the greatest right to us, but our aunts, especially Pelageya Ilyinishna, when the latter took us away to Kazan, had the external rights and `Auntie' submitted to them, but her love did not thereby diminish. She lived with her sister, the Countess L.A. Tolstaya, but in her soul she lived with us, and, whenever possible, she would return to us. The fact that the last years of her life, about twenty years, were passed me at Yasnaya Polyana was a great joy to me. But how incapable we were of appreciating our happiness, the more so that true happiness is never loud nor manifest! I appreciated it, but far from sufficiently. `Auntie' liked to keep sweets in her room in various little dishes--dried figs, gingerbread, dates; she liked to buy them and to treat me first to them. I cannot forget, and cannot call to mind without a cruel twinge of conscience, how several times I refused her money for the sweets, and how she, sadly sighing, desisted. It is true I was then in straitened circumstances, but now I cannot recall without remorse how I refused her!
"When I was already married and she had begun to fail, she once, having waited for the opportunity when I was in her room, turning her face away, said to me (I saw she was ready to shed tears): `Look here, mes chers amis, my room is a very good one and you will require it. But if I die in it,' she went on with a trembling voice, `the memory of that will be unpleasant, so move me to another that I may not die here.' Such she was from the earliest time of my childhood, when as yet I could not understand....
"Her room was thus. In the left corner stood a worktable with innumerable little articles valuable only to her, in the right corner a glass cupbord with icons and one big one--that of the Saviour--in a silver setting; in the middle the couch on which she slept, in front of it a table. To the right a door for her maid.
"I have said that Aunty Tatyana Aleksandrovna had the greatest influence on my life. This influence consisted first, in that ever since childhood she taught me the spiritual delight of love. She taught me this, but not in words: 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, lonely life.
"But about this we will speak later.
"Although this reminiscence is not of childhood but of adult life, I cannot refrain from recalling my bachelor life with her at Yasnaya Polyana."6
In the chapter dealing with Tolstoy's parents we have already mentioned that his novels, Childhood, Boyhood, and Youth, are not to be considered autobiographical; but this remark only applies to their external facts and scenery, created by the author to give greater completeness to his picture.
As to the description of the inner life of the child-hero, we can say with confidence that, in one way or another the author lived through all the experiences of his hero, and therefore we consider that we have a right to use them as furnishing hints for our biography.
Further, we know that certain of the characters which we meet with in this work are copies from life. We will mention them here as they will throw some further light on the group of persons among whom Tolstoy's childhood was spent.
Thus, the German, Karl Ivanovich Mauer, is certainly Feodor Ivanovich Kessel, the German tutor, who really lived in Tolstoy's home, and whom we have mentioned before. Tolstoy speaks of him in his Earliest Memories. He must undoubtedly have influenced the spiritual life of the child, and we may presume that the influence had been for good, since the author of Childhood speaks with great love of him, where he sketches his "honest, straightforward, and loving nature."
It is not without reason that Tolstoy begins the story of his childhood with a description of this character. Feodor Ivanovich died in Yasnaya Polyana, and was buried in the parish churchyard.
Another real character in Childhood is the half-crazy Grisha. Though he is not a real person, many traits of his character are true to life; he had evidently left a deep trace in the child's soul. To him Tolstoy dedicates the following pathetic words describing the evening prayer of the pilgrim, which he overheard:
"His words were incorrect, but touching. He prayed for all his benefactors (thus he called all who received him), among them for my mother, and for us; he prayed for himself and asked the Lord to forgive him his heavy sins, and repeated, `O Lord, forgive mine enemies.' He arose with groans, still repeating the same words, prostrated himself upon the ground, and again arose, in spite of the weight of the chains that emitted a grating, penetrating sound as they struck the ground....
"Grisha was for a long time in this attitude of religious ecstasy, and he improvised prayers. Now he repeated several times in succession, `The Lord have mercy upon me,' but every time with new strength and expression; now, again, he said, `Forgive me, O Lord, instruct me what to do, instruct me what to do, O Lord!' with an expression as if he expected an immediate answer to his prayer; now, again, were heard only pitiful sobs. He rose on his knees, crossed his arms on his breast, and grew silent.
"`Thy will be done!' he suddenly exclaimed with an inimitable expression, knocked his brow against the floor, and began to sob like an infant.
"Much water has flowed since then, many memories of the past have lost all meaning for me and have become dim recollections, and pilgrim Grisha has long ago ended his last pilgrimage; but the impression which he produced on me, and the feeling which he evoked, will never die in my memory.
"O great Christian Grisha! Your faith was so strong that you felt the nearness of God; your love was so great that words flowed of their own will from your lips, and you did not verify them by reason. And what high praise you gave to the majesty of God, when, not finding any words, you prostrated yourself on the ground."
Are we not entitled to regard this man as the first who taught Tolstoy that faith of the people, which, after his fruitless wanderings through the labyrinths of theology, philosophy, and positive science, satisfied his soul. A faith which he in his turn has lighted with his own light of reason, purified and intensified in the struggle and sufferings which unavoidably accompany the search for truth. He gives a few indications of this in his Reminiscences.
Of other secondary characters in the novel we will mention Mimi and her daughter Katenka, "something like the first love." Under the name Mimi is presented the governess of a neighboring house, and Katenka is Dunechka Temeshova, an adopted member of the tolstoy family. Tolstoy in his Reminiscences, speaks of her thus:
"Besides my brothers and my sister, a girl of my age, Dunechka Temeshov, grew up with us, and I must tell who she was and how she came to be in our house. The visitors whom I remember in childhood were my aunt's husband Yushkov, of an appearance strange to children, with black mustaches and whiskers and wearing spectacles (I shall yet have much to say about him); and my godfather, S. Yazikov, a remarkably ugly man, saturated with the smell of tobacco, his big face possessing a superfluity of skin which he kept twisting incessantly into the strangest grimaces, and our neighbors Ogarev and Islenev. Besides these we were also visited by a distant relative through the Gorchakovs, a wealthy bachelor Temeshov, who addressed my father as brother, and had a peculiarly enthusiastic love for him. He lived forty versts from Yasnaya Polyana, in the village Pirogovo, and once brought with him from there some sucking pigs, with tails twisted into rings, which were placed on a tray on the table in the servants' hall. Temeshov, Pirogovo, and sucking pigs are blended into one in my imagination.
"Besides this, Temeshov retained a place in the memory of us children by his playing on the piano in the hall some dancing tune--it was all he could play--and making us dance to this music, and when we used to ask him what dance we were to dance, he would say that all dances could be danced to that music. And we liked to take advantage of this.
"It was a winter evening. Tea was over, we were soon going to be taken to bed, and my eyes were already blinking, when from the servants' hall into the drawing-room, where we were all sitting, and where only two candles were burning, and it was half dark, there came suddenly and quickly through the big open door a man in soft boots who, having reached the middle of the room, fell down on his knees. The lighted pipe with its long stem, which he held in his hand, struck against the floor, and the sparks flew out lighting the face of the kneeling man--it was Temeshov. What Temeshov told my father, while kneeling before him, I do not remember nor indeed did I hear, but only afterward I learned that he had fallen on his knees before my father because he had brought with him his illegitimate daughter, Dunechka, concerning whom he had previously spoken, and arranged that my father should accept her and bring her up with his own children. Thenceforth a broadfaced girl appeared among us, of the same age as myself, Dunechka, with her nurse Eupraksiya, a tall, wrinkled old woman with a hanging chin, like a turkey in which there was a ball which she used to let us feel.
"The introduction of Dunechka into our house was connected with a complicated business agreement between my father and Temeshov. The agreement was of this sort:
"Temeshov was very wealthy. He had no legitimate children; he only had two little girls, Dunechka and Verochka, the latter a little hunchback, born of a former serf girl, Marfusha, who was subsequently set free. The heirs of Temeshov were his sisters. He made over to them all his estates except Pirogovo, in which he lived, and this he desired to transfer to my father, on the understanding that my father should remit to the two girls its value of 30,000 pounds sterling. It was always said of Pirogovo that it was as good as a gold mine, and was worth much more than that sum. In order to arrange this matter the following method was devised: Temeshov drew up a conveyance according to which he sold Pirogovo to my father for 30,000 pounds, while my father gave promissory notes to three unconcerned persons--Islenev, Yazikov, and Glebov--to the amount of 10,000 pounds each. On Temeshov's death my father was to take possession of the estate, and having previously explained to Glebov, Islenev, and Yazikov for what purpose the notes were given them, he was to pay them the 30,000 pounds which were to go to the two girls.
"Perhaps I may be mistaken in the description of the whole plan, but I positively know that the estate of Pirogovo passed over to us after my father's death, and that there were three promissory notes payable to Islenev, Glebov, and Yazikov, that our guardians redeemed these notes, and that the amount of the first two was paid to the girls, 10,000 to each; whereas Yazikov misappropriated the other 10,000; but about this later.
"Dunechka lived with us, and was a nice simple, quiet, but not clever girl, and much disposed to weep. I remember how, when I had already learned French, I was made to teach her the alphabet. At first it went well (we were each five years old), but later she probably became tired, and ceased to name correctly the letter I pointed out. I insisted. She began to cry. I also. And when the elders came we could not pronounce anything owing to our hopeless tears. I remember another incident about her. When a plum was found to be missing from a plate and the culprit could not be discovered, Feodor Ivanovich, with a serious face and not looking at us, said that its being eaten did not much matter, but that any one who swallowed the stone might die. Dunechka could not restrain her terror, and said that she had spat out the stone. I further remember her tears of despair when she and my brother Mitenka got up a game which consisted in spitting into each other's mouth a little copper chain, and she spat so strongly, while Mitenka opened his mouth wide, that he swallowed the chain. She cried inconsolably until the doctor arrived and reassured everyone...."
This brief but valuable information Tolstoy gives concerning the servants who surrounded him during his childhood. The information forms a supplement to what is described in his published story Childhood. We borrow this description also from his Reminiscences:
"I have described Praskovya Issayevna fairly correctly in Childhood. All I there wrote about her was actual truth. She was the housekeeper, a venerable personage. I remember one of the pleasantest impressions was that of sitting in her room after or during a lesson and talking with and listening to her. She probably liked to see us at these moments of specially happy and touching expansiveness: `Praskovya Issayevna, how did grandfather fight? On horseback?' one would ask her.
"`He fought in various ways, on horseback and on foot, and in consequence he was General-in-Chief,' she would answer, opening a cupboard and getting out a burning tablet which she called the `Ochakovskiy smoke.' According to her words, it appeared that this tablet grandfather brought from Ochakov. She would ignite a taper at the little lamp in front of the icons, and with it would light the tablet, which smouldered with a pleasant scent.
"Besides her devotion and honesty, I especially loved her because, with Anna Ivanovna, she was connected in my eyes with that mysterious side of my grandfather's life--with the `Ochakovskiy smoke'.
"Anna Ivanovna lived in retirement, but once or twice she visited the house, and I saw her. It was said that she was a hundred years old, and that she remembered Pogachev.7 She had very black eyes and one tooth. She was in that stage of old age which inspires children with fear.
"Nurse Tatyana Filipovna, small, dusky, and with plump little hands, was the young assistant of our old nurse Annushka, whom I scarcely recall precisely, because at the time I was with Annushka I was conscious of myself only. And as I did not observe myself nor understand myself as I then was, so also I do not remember Annushka.
"And as I did not look at myself, and don't remember how I looked, so I cannot recall to mind Annushka, but Dunechka's nurse, Eupraksiya, with a little ball on her neck, is well preserved in my memory.
"Nurse Tatyana Filipovna I remember because she was afterward the nurse of my nieces and of my eldest son. She was one of those pathetic beings from among the people who so identify themselves with the families of their nurslings that they transfer all their interests to those families, and so that their own relatives see in them only an opportunity for extortion or await the inheritance of the money they earned. Such have always spendthrift brothers, husbands, or sons. Such were, so far as I can remember, Tatyana Filipovna's husband and son. I remember how he [sic?] painfully, quietly, and meekly died in the very place where I am now sitting writing these Reminiscences. Her brother, Nikolay Filipovich, was a coachman, whom we not only loved, but for whom, as gentlemen's children generally do, we felt a great reverence. He had peculiar thick boots; he always carried with him the pleasant smell of the stables, and his voice was tender and musical.8
"The butler, Vasiliy Trubetskoy, should be mentioned. He was a pleasant, kindly man, who evidently loved children, and therefore loved us, especially Seryozha, at whose house he afterward served, and where he died. I remember the kind, one-sided smile of his beaming face with its wrinkles, and his neck, which we saw close, and his peculiar smell when he took us in his arms and seated us on the tray (it was one of our great pleasures; `And me, now me!') and carried us about the pantry--a place mysterious in our eyes, with its strange underground passage. One poignant reminiscence connected with him was his departure to Shcherbachovka, an estate in the government of Kursk, inherited by my father from a relative. This (Vasiliy's departure) happened during Yule-tide, at the time when all the children and some of the household servants were playing at `Rublik' in the hall. I must say a word about those Yuletide amusements. They took place thus: all the household servants--and there were many of them, about thirty--used to dress up, come into the house, play various games, and dance to the accompaniment of the fiddle of old Gregoriy, who only appeared in the house on these occasions. It was very amusing. Those masquerading usually represented a bear with its leader, a goat, Turks and Turkish women, tyrolese, brigands, peasant men and women. I remember how beautiful some of the characters appeared to me, and especially so Masha, the Turkish woman. Sometimes Auntie dressed us up also. Especially desirable to us was a belt with stones and a muslin towel, embroidered with silver and gold; and I thought myself very grand with mustaches painted with burnt cork. I remember that looking in the mirror at my face, with black mustaches and eyebrows, I could not refrain from a smile of delight, though I had to assume the fierce expression of a Turk. All these characters walked about the rooms and were treated to various refreshments. During one of the Yule-tides of my earlier childhood, all the Islenevs came to us dressed up: the father, who was my wife's grandfather, with his three sons and three daughters. They all had on costumes, which appeared most extraordinary to us; there was a toilet, there was a boot, there was a cardboard belt, and something else besides. The Islenevs, having driven thirty miles, changed dress in the village, and on entering our hall Islenev sat down to the piano and sang some verses he had invented, to a tune which I can still remember. The verses were: `We have come here to congratulate you on the New Year; should we succeed in amusing you we shall be happy!' This was all very extraordinary, and probably entertaining to the elders, but for us children the most amusing were the household servants. Such entertainments took place during Christmas and at New Year, sometimes even later, up to the day of Baptism9; but after New Year few people came and the amusements slackened. So it was on the day when Vasiliy was leaving for Shcherbakova. I remember we were sitting in a circle in the corner of the dimly lighted hall on home-made chairs of imitation mahogany with leather cushions and playing at `Rublik'. One of us was walking about searching for the ruble, while we, passing it on from hand to hand, were singing, `Pass on Rublik, pass on Rublik.' I remember one of the servant-girls kept singing these words with an especially pleasant and true voice. Suddenly the door of the pantry opened, and Vasiliy, buttoned up in an unusual way, without his tray and china, passed along the end of the hall into the study. Then only did I learn that Vasiliy was going as overseer to Shcherbakova. I understood it was a promotion, and was glad for Vasiliy, and at the same time I was not only sorry to part from him, to know that he would no longer be in the pantry and would no longer carry us on his tray, but I did not even understand, did not believe, that such an alteration could take place. I became dreadfully and mysteriously sad, and the chant of `Pass on Rublik' grew pathetically touching. And when Vasiliy left my aunt, and with his dear one-sided smile approached us, and kissed us on the shoulder, I experienced for the first time horror and fear in the presence of the inconstancy of life, and pity and love toward dear Vasiliy. When I afterward used to meet Vasiliy I saw in him merely a good or a bad overseer of my brother's, a man whom I respected, but there was no longer any trace of the former sacred, brotherly, human feeling.
"In a mysterious way, incomprehensible to the human mind, the impressions of early childhood are preserved in one's memory, and not only are they preserved, but they grow in some unfathomed depth of the soul, like a seed thrown on good ground, and after many years all of a sudden thrust their vernal shoots into God's world."
Such a seed-time in Tolstoy's early childhood were the days of his eldest brother Nikolenka's games with the younger brothers. His great influence on Tolstoy's life is referred to in his Reminiscences more than once, for example, in the stories about the Fanfaronov Hill, Ant Brothers, and the Green Wand.
"Yes, the Fanfaronov Hill is one of the earliest, pleasantest, and most important memories. My eldest brother, Nikolenka, was six years older than I. He was consequently ten or eleven when I was four or five, namely, at the time when he led us on to the Fanfaronov Hill. In our earlier youth we used to address him (I don't know how it happened) as `you'.10 He was a wonderful boy, and later a wonderful man. Turgenev used very truly to say about him that but for the lack of certain faults he would have been a great writer. For instance he was deficient in vanity; he was not in the least interested in what people thought of him. Whereas the qualities of a writer which he did possess were, first of all, a fine artistic sense, an extremely developed sense of proportion, a good-natured, gay human, 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 he could during whole hours narrate ghost stories or humorous tales in the spirit of Mrs. Radcliffe without pause or hesitation, and with such vivid realization 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 pointed mustaches, intertwined in the most varied attitudes and occupied in the most various ways. These drawings were also full of imagination and humor.
"Well, it was he who, when I and my brothers were, myself five years old, Mitenka six, Seryozha seven, announced to us that he possessed a secret by means of which, when it should be disclosed, all men would become happy: there would be no diseases, no troubles, no one would be angry with any one, all would love each other, all would become `Ant brothers.' He probably meant `Moravian brothers,' about whom he had heard and had been reading, but in our language they were `Ant brothers.'11 And I remember that the word Ant especially pleased us, as reminding us of ants in an ant-hill. We even organized a game of ant brothers, which consisted in our sitting down under chairs, sheltering ourselves with boxes, screening ourselves with handkerchiefs, and, thus, crouching in the dark, pressing ourselves against each other. I remember experiencing a special feeling of love and pathos and liking this game very much. The ant brotherhood was revealed to us, but the chief secret as to the way for all men to cease suffering any misfortune, to leave off quarreling and being angry, and to become continuously happy, this secret, as he told us, was written by him on a green stick, which stick he had buried by the road on the edge of a certain ravine, at which spot, since my corpse must be buried somewhere, I have asked to be buried in memory of Nikolenka. Besides this little stick, there was also a certain Fanfaronov Hill up which he said he could lead us, if only we would fulfill all the appointed conditions. These conditions were: first, to stand in a corner and not think of the white bear. The second condition was to walk without wavering along a crack between the boards of the floor; and the third, for a whole year not to see a hare either alive or dead or cooked; and it was necessary to swear not to reveal these secrets to anyone. He who should fulfill these conditions and others more difficult which Nikolenka was going to communicate later, would have his desire fulfilled, whatever it might be. We had to express our desires. Seryozha desired to be able to model horses and hens out of wax. Mitenka desired to be able to draw all kinds of things like an artist on a large scale. I could not devise anything but to be able to draw small pictures. All this, as it happens with children, was very soon forgotten and no one ascended the Fanfaronov Hill, but I remember the profound importance with which Nikolenka initiated us into these mysteries, and our respect and awe in regard to the wonderful things which were revealed. But I have especially kept a strong impression of the `Ant Brotherhood' and the mysterious green stick connected with it destined to make all men happy.
"As I now conjecture, Nikolenka had probably read or heard of the Freemasons--about their aspiration toward the happiness of mankind, and about the mysterious initiatory rites on entering their order; he had probably also heard about the Moravian brothers, and linking all into one by his active imagination, his love to men, and his aptness to kindness, he invented all these tales, enjoyed them himself, and mystified us with them.
"The ideals of ant brothers lovingly cleaving to each other, though not beneath two arm-chairs curtained with handkerchiefs, but of all mankind under the wide dome of the sky, has remained the same for me. As then I believed that there existed a little green stick whereon was written that which could destroy all the evil in men and give them great welfare, so do I now also believe that such truth exists, and that it will be revealed to men and will give them all that it promises."12
Later on we shall refer to Tolstoy's memories of his brother Dmitriy. Here we will quote another extract from his Reminiscences concerning his brother Sergey, also relating to his early childhood: "Mitenka was for me a companion, Nikolenka I respected, but Seryozha I enthusiastically admired and imitated. I loved him and wished to be like him; I admired his handsome appearance, his singing--he was always singing--his drawing, his cheerful mirth, and especially, however strange it may be to say so, the spontaneity of his egotism. I always realized myself, was always conscious of my myself; I always felt whether others' thoughts and feelings about me were just or not, and this spoiled my joy of life. This probably is why I especially liked in others the opposite feature, spontaneity of egotism. And for this I especially loved Seryozha. The word loved is not correct. I loved Nikolenka, but for Seryozha I was filled with admiration as for something quite apart and incomprehensible to me. It was a human life, a very fine one, but completely incomprehensible to me, mysterious, and therefore specially attractive.
"A few days ago he died, and in his last illness and his death he was to me as unfathomable and as dear as in our bygone days of childhood. In more advanced age, his latter days, he loved me more, valued my attachment, was proud of me, wished to agree with me, but could not, and remained the same as he had been, entirely original, altogether himself, handsome, high-spirited, proud, and above all and to such an extent a truthful and sincere man that I have never seen his like. He was what he was; he concealed nothing, and did not desire to appear anything.
"With Nikolenka I wished to associate, to talk, to think; Seryozha I only wished to imitate. This imitation began in our first childhood. He took to keeping his own hens and chickens, and I did the same. This was perhaps my first insight into animal life. I remember chickens of various breeds--gray, spotted, or tufted, how they used to run to us at our call, how we fed them and hated the big Dutch cock which maltreated them. Seryozha had begged these chickens for himself; I did the same in imitation of him. Seryozha used to draw and paint on long strips of paper (and as it appeared to me wonderfully well) rows of hens and cocks of various colors, and I did the same but not so well. (In this I hoped to perfect myself by the means of the Fanfaronov Hill.) Seryozha, when the double doors were removed in spring, had the idea of feeding the hens through the keyhole in the door by means of long thin sausages of black and white bread, and I did the same."13
Let us add here a few more fragmentary reminiscences related by Tolstoy himself, which, like most of the stories of his early childhood, it is impossible to arrange in a chronological order, though it would be a pity to omit them, as they give some interesting traits descriptive of his childhood.
"One childish memory of an insignificant event left a strong impression on me," said Tolstoy. "It was, I see it now, in our nursery rooms upstairs. Temeshov was sitting talking to Feodor Ivanovich. I do not remember why the good-natured Temeshov, very quietly said: `My cook (or servant, I do not remember which) took it into his head to eat meat during fast time. I sent him to be a soldier.'14 The reason why I now remember this is, that at the time it seemed to something strange and incomprehensible.
"Another event was the Perov inheritance. I remember a caravan, with horses and carts loaded high, which arrived from Nerucha15 when the lawsuit concerning this estate had been won, thanks to Glya Mitrovich.
"He was a tall old man with long hair, addicted to fits of drinking, a former serf of the owner, and a great specialist, such as there used to be in olden times, in dealing with various cases that might lead to litigation. He directed the case, and in return he was kept until his death in Yasnaya Polyana.
"Other memorable impressions are: the arrival of Peter Tolstoy, the father of my sister's husband, Valerian; he used to come into the drawing-room in his dressing-gown; we did not understand why, but later we learned that it was because he was in the last stage of consumption. Another impression: the arrival of his brother, the famous traveller in America, Feodor Tolstoy. I remember how he drove up in a post-chaise, entered my father's study, and ordered his special dry French bread to be brought. He did not eat any other. At this time my brother Sergey was suffering from a very bad toothache. He asked what was the matter, and having ascertained, said that he could cure the pain by magnetism. He entered the study and locked the door after him. In a few minutes he came out with two cambrick pocket handkerchiefs--I remember they had a fancy violet edge--and he gave the handkerchiefs, saying: `When he puts on this one the pain will cease, and this one is for him to sleep with.' The handkerchiefs were taken, put on Seryozha, and we carried away and kept the impression that everything took place as he had said.
"I remember his fine, bronzed face, shaven, save for thick white whiskers down to the corners of the mouth and similarly white curly hair. I should like to relate much about this extraordinary, guilty, and attractive man!"
Here, unfortunately, these reminiscences stop short.
Let us conclude this chapter on the childhood of Tolstoy with the poetic memory in his published story.
"Happy, happy, irrevocable period of childhood! How can one help loving and cherishing its memories? These memories refresh and elevate my soul and serve me as a source of my best enjoyments....
"After the prayer I rolled myself into my coverlet, and my heart felt light and cheerful. One dream chased another, but what were they about? They were intangible, but filled with pure love and hope for the bright happiness. I thought of Karl Ivanovich and his bitter fate, of the only man whom I knew to be unhappy, and I felt so sorry for him, and so loved him, that the tears gushed from my eyes, and I thought: God grant him happiness, and me an opportunity of helping him, and alleviating his sorrow; I was ready to sacrifice everything for him. Then I stuck my favorite china toy--a hare or a dog--into the corner of the down pillow, and I was happy seeing how comfortable and snug the toy was there. I also prayed the Lord that He would give happiness to everybody, and that all should be satisfied, and that tomorrow should be good weather for the outing, and then I turned on my other side, my thoughts and dreams became mixed and disturbed, and I fell softly, quietly asleep, my face wet with tears.
"Will that freshness, carelessness, need of love, and strength of faith, which one possesses in childhood, ever return? What time can be better than that when all the best virtues--innocent merriment and limitless need of love--are the only incitements in life?
"Where are all those ardent prayers, where is the best gift--those tears of contrition? The consoling angel came on his pinions, with a smile wiped off those tears, and fanned sweet dreams to the uncorrupted imagination of the child.
"Is it possible life has left such heavy traces in my heart that these tears and that ecstasy have forever gone from me? Is it possible, nothing but memories are left?"
Notes to Chapter IV:
1. N. P. Zagoskin, "Count L.N. Tolstoy and his Student Years." Historic Review, Jan. 1894, p. 87.
2. The governess; see concerning her further on in the following chapter.
3. First Reminiscences (from unpublished autobiographical sketches). Tolstoy's Complete Works, tenth Russian edition, vol. xiii, p. 515.
4. "Toinette, oh! she was charming!"
5. "16th August 1836.--Nicholas has today made me a strange proposal - that I should marry him, be a mother to his children, and never desert them. I refused the first proposal, I have promised to fulfill the other as long as I live."
6. From Tolstoy's rough Memories and uncorrected notes intrusted to me.
7. The leader of a widespread and bloody rebellion in the reign of Catherine II.
8. From Tolstoy's draft Reminiscences.
9. Sixth of January.
10. Instead of the singular "thou," as is usual in Russian between near relatives or friends.
11. The word for ant in Russian is "muravey," whence the similarity.
12. From Tolstoy's draft Reminiscences.
13. From Tolstoy's draft Reminiscences.
14. In Russia, in the days of serfdom, the enlisting of a serf into the ranks for the fifteen years was regarded as the severest punishment short of flogging him to death.
15. This estate of 900 acres which we received by inheritance was sold for the purpose of feeding the starving during the great famine of 1840.
With the beginning of Tolstoy's boyhood came the time for the more serious education of his elder brothers, Nikolay and Sergey. For this purpose, in autumn of 1836, the Tolstoy family moved to Moscow, and settled down at Plushchikha, in a house belonging to one Shcherbakov. This house is still in use, and stands back opposite St. Mary the Virgin's Church, Smolenskiy, its facade forming an acute angle with the direction of the street.
In this house they lived during the winter of 1836-7, and after their father's death they remained there for the summer.
Once in the summer of 1837 Tolstoy's father went to Tula on business, and in the street on his way to the house of one Temeshov, a friend, all at once he staggered, fell on the ground, and died of apoplexy. Some people said he was poisoned by his man-servant, because, though his money disappeared, yet some unnegotiable bonds he had on him were brought to the Tolstoys in Moscow by an unknown beggar.
His body was taken by his sister Aleksandra and his eldest son Nikolay to Yasnaya Polyana, in Tula, where he was buried.
His father's death was the event which left the deepest impression on Tolstoy in his childhood. He used to say that this death called forth in him a feeling of religious awe, bringing the question of life and death vividly before him for the first time. As he was not present when his father died, he would not believe for a long time that he was no longer alive. For a long time afterward, if he looked at the faces of strangers in the streets of Moscow, he not only fancied, but was almost certain, that he might, at any moment, come upon his father alive. And this mixed attitude of hope and unbelief called forth in him a special feeling of tenderness. After their father's death the Tolstoys remained for the summer in Moscow, and this was the first and last time that Tolstoy spent a summer in town.
They sometimes made excursions to places near the city in a carriage drawn by four bay horses driven abreast, according to custom. These occasions, on which they were unattended by a post-boy, made a strong impression on him - attributable, it may be, not only to the beauty of Kuntsev-Neskuchny, but in some measure to escape from the unpleasant smells emitted by the factories which even then were disfiguring the suburbs of Moscow.
"The death of her son quite killed my grandmother, Pelageya Nikolayevna; she wept perpetually, and every evening ordered the door into the next room to be opened, and said that she saw her son there and talked with him. Sometimes she asked with horror of her daughters: `Is it really, really true that he is no longer?' She died at the end of nine months from a broken heart and grief."
His grandmother's death reminded Tolstoy anew of the religious import of life and death - it may be without his being fully conscious of it, but the impression was there, and that a strong one. His grandmother suffered for a long time, till at last she was seized with dropsy, and Tolstoy remembers the horror he felt when he was admitted to take leave of her, and how she, lying in her lofty white bed, all in white, looked round with difficulty on her grandchildren, and without making a motion let them kiss her white hand which had swelled up like a pillow. But, as is usual with children, the sense of fear and pity in the presence of death was soon succeeded by playfulness, thoughtlessness, and love of mischief. On one holiday, little Vladimir Milyutin, a friend Tolstoy's of the same age, came to stay in the house; it was he who made to the Tolstoys while they were still in the gymnasium the remarkable statement - though the information did not make a strong impression - that there was no God.
Just before dinner the wildest and strangest merry-making was gain on in the children's room, in which Sergey, Dmitriy, and Lev were taking part, though Milyutin and Nikolay had more sense than the rest and kept aloof. The fun consisted in burning paper in pots behind a partition where the commode stood. It is difficult to imagine where all the amusement was, but no doubt the sport was greatly enjoyed. All of a sudden in the midst of the merrymaking, the light-haired, wiry, and energetic little tutor, St. Thomas, described in Boyhood as St. Jerome, came in with a quick step, and, without paying any attention to their doings, and without scolding them, said to them, with the lower jaw of his white face trembling: "Votre grand'mere est morte!"
"I remember," related Tolstoy, "how at that time new jackets of black material, bound with white braid, were made for all of us. It was dreadful to see the undertaker's workmen hurrying about the house, and then the coffin brought with a lid covered with glazed brocade, and my grandmother's severe face with its crooked nose, in a white cap, with a white kerchief on her neck, lying high in the coffin on the table, and it was piteous to see the tears of our aunts and of Pashenka, but at the same time the new braided jackets and the soothing attitude taken toward us by those around gratified us. I do not remember why we were removed to the aisle during the funeral, and I remember how pleasant it was to me to overhear a conversation of some gossiping female guests near us, who said: `Completely orphans, the father has only just died, and now the grandmother is gone too.'"
Tolstoy has mixed recollections of good and evil about Prosper St. Thomas, the French tutor.
"I do not now remember for what," says Tolstoy in his Reminiscences, "but it was for something utterly undeserving of punishment that St. Thomas first locked me up in a room and secondly threatened to flog me. Hereupon I had a dreadful feeling of anger, indignation, and disgust, not only toward St. Thomas himself, but toward the violence which it was intended to inflict upon me. Very likely this incident was the cause of the dreadful horror and repulsion toward every kind of violence which I have experienced all my life."1
"However, the tutor, St. Thomas, watched attentively the manifestation of gifts in his little pupil. He probably had noticed something extraordinary in the boy, for he used to say about him: "Ce petit a une tete, c'est un petit Moliere."2
After the death of Tolstoy's grandmother, complicated transactions in connection with the Court of Wards making it imperative that expenses should be cut down, part of the family returned to estates, namely, Dmitriy, Lev, and Mariya, with their aunt, Tatyana Aleksandrovna Yergolskaya. Here the children's tutors were replaced by new German teachers and Russian students from the theological seminaries. Their guardian was the Countess Aleksandra Ilyinishna Osten-Saken.
Of this remarkable woman Tolstoy thus writes in his memoirs:
"My aunt Aleksandra Ilyinishna was very early given in marriage in St. Petersburg to a wealthy Count Osten-Saken of the Baltic Provinces. The match appeared very brilliant, but from the conjugal point of view it terminated very sadly for my aunt, although perhaps the consequences of this marriage were beneficial to her soul. Aunt Aline, as we called her in the family, was probably very attractive, with her large blue eyes and the meek expression of her pale face, as she is depicted in a very good portrait taken when she was a girl of sixteen. Soon after the marriage, Osten-Saken went with his young wife to his great estate in the Baltic Provinces, and there he increasingly manifested his diseased mental condition, which at first showed itself only in a very marked and causeless jealousy. During the very first year of the marriage, when my aunt was already nearing childbirth, the husband's malady increased to such an extent that spells of complete aberration used to take possession of him, during which he thought that his foes, desirous of carrying away his wife, were surrounding him, and that his only way of escape was in flight. This was in summer. Having got up early in the morning, he announced to his wife that the only means of safety was to flee, that he had ordered the calesh, that they were to start immediately, and that she must get ready. And indeed the calesh drove up, he placed my aunt inside, and ordered the coachman to drive as quickly as possible. On the way he got two pistols out of a box, cocked the trigger, and having given one to my aunt, told her that if his foes found out about his flight they would catch him up, and then they were lost, and the only thing which would then remain for them to do would be to kill each other. My frightened and bewildered aunt took the pistol and tried to dissuade her husband, but he did not listen to her, and only kept turning round, anticipating pursuit, and urging the coachman to speed. Unfortunately, out of a lane converging upon the high-road there appeared a carriage. He called out that all was lost, and ordered my aunt to shoot herself, and himself shot point-blank into my aunt's breast. Startled by what he had done, and seeing that the carriage which had frightened him had turned in another direction, he stopped, lifted my wounded and bleeding aunt from the carriage, put her down on the road, and galloped away. Fortunately for my aunt, some peasants soon came across her, raised her, and drove her to the pastor, who bound up her wounds as well as he could, and sent for the doctor. The wound was in the right side of the chest, passing completely through the body (my aunt showed me the scar remaining), but was not serious. When she was recovering, and still lying enceinte at the pastor's house, her husband, having come to himself, hurried to her, and after explaining to the doctor how she was unfortunately wounded, he sought an interview with her. This interview was dreadful. He, cunning as are all the mentally diseased, pretended repentance for his act, and concern only about her health. Having remained with her some time talking quite rationally about everything, he profited by a moment when they were left alone together to attempt to fulfill his intention. As if concerned with her health, he asked her to show him her tongue, and when she put it out, he caught hold of it with one hand, and with the other brought out a razor he had in readiness, with the intention of cutting the tongue off. A struggle ensued - she tore herself away from him, screamed; people rushed in, seized him, and led him away.
"Thenceforth his insanity took a thoroughly definite form, and he lived for a long time in some institution for lunatics, having no communication with my aunt. Soon after this, my aunt was removed to her parents' house in St. Petersburg, and there she gave birth to a dead child. For fear of the consequences of grief at her child's death, she was told that it was alive, and a girl who was at the same time born of a servant known to the family, the wife of a court cook, was brought to her. This girl, Pashenka, who lived with us, was already grown up when I begin myself to remember. I do not know when the history of her birth was disclosed to Pashenka, but when I knew her she was already aware she was not my aunt's daughter. Aunt Aleksandra Ilyinishna, after what had happened to her, lived first with her parents, and then at my father's. After his death she was our guardian, but when I was twelve she died in the convent of Optin Pustin.
"My aunt was a truly religious woman. Her favorite occupation was reading the lives of the saints, conversing with pilgrims, crazy devotees, monks, and nuns, of whom some always lived in our house, while others only visited my aunt. Among the constant residents was the nun Mariya Gerassimovna, my sister's godmother, who had in her youth undertaken pilgrimages in the character of a `crazy Ivanushka.' She was my sister's godmother, because my mother had promised this to her, should she by prayer obtain from God for my mother a daughter, a boon which my mother greatly desired after bearing four sons. A daughter was born, and Mariya Gerassimovna became her godmother, living partly in the Tula convent and partly at our house.
"Aunt Aleksandra Ilyinishna was not only outwardly religious, keeping the fasts, praying much, and associating with people of saintly life, such as was in her time the hermit Leonid in the Optin Pustin, but she herself lived a truly Christian life, endeavoring not only to avoid all luxury and acceptance of service, but also, as much as possible, to serve others. She never had any money, because she gave away all she had to those who asked.
"The maid Gasha, who after my grandmother's death passed over to my aunt, has related to me how during their Moscow life my aunt, in going to Matins, used carefully to pass on tiptoe by her sleeping maid, and herself discharged all the functions which according to the then received custom should have been done by the maid. In food and dress she was as simple and unexacting as it is possible to imagine. However unpleasant it is to me to say so, I remember from childhood the specific acrid smell connected with my aunt, probably due to negligence in her toilet, and this was that graceful, poetic Aline with beautiful blue eyes who used to like to read and copy French verses, who played on the harp, and always had great success at the biggest balls! I remember how she was always as affectionate and kind to all the most important men and women as to nuns and pilgrims. I remember how her brother-in-law, Yushkov, liked to make fun of her, and how he once sent from Kazan a big box directed to her. In the box another box was found, in that one a third, and so on until there appeared quite a tine one, in which, wrapped in cotton-wool, lay a china monk. I remember how my father laughed good-naturedly, showing this parcel to my aunt. I also remember my father relating at table how she, according to his assertion, with her cousin Molchanova, ran after a priest whom they reverenced that they might get his benediction. My father described this, comparing it to coursing, saying that Molchanova cut the priest off from the gates before the alter; he then threw himself toward the north gates, she in pursuit made a miss, and here it was that Aline caught him. I remember her dear, good-natured laugh and face shining with pleasure. The religious feeling which filled her soul was evidently so important to her, so much higher than all the rest, that she could not be angry or annoyed by anything, she could not attribute to worldly matters the importance which is generally given to them. She took care of us when she was our guardian, but all she did did not absorb her soul, all was subdued to the service of God as she understood that service."3
As has been stated before, the younger children, i.e., Dmitriy, Mariya, and Lev, lived with Aunt Tatyana in the country after their grandmother's death, and the elder, Nikolay and Sergey, remained with their guardian, Aleksandra Ilyinishna, in Moscow. In the summer the whole family met at Yasnaya Polyana. Thus passed the years of 1838-9, and the year 1840 began a year of famine; the crops were so poor that the Tolstoys had to buy corn to feed their serfs, and the means for this purpose were obtained from the sale of the Neruch estate which they had inherited.
The food for the horses was cut short and the free supply of oats was stopped. Tolstoy recollects how sorry the children were for their favorite horses, and how they secretly ran to the peasants' field of oats and, without being aware of the crime they were committing, plucked the oat stems, gathered the grain in their skirts, and treated their horses to it.
In the autumn of 1840 the whole family moved to Moscow where they spent the winter of 1840-41; for the summer they returned to Yasnaya again. In the autumn of 1841 their guardian, the Countess A.I. Osten-Saken, died.
She died in the convent Optina Pustin. During her stay there the children remained in Yasnaya Polyana with their Aunt Tatyana. But when the news reached her that Aleksandra Ilyinishna was on her death-bed, Tatyana went to the convent.
After her death her sister, Pelageya Ilyinishna, who was then the wife of V.I. Yushkov, a Kazan landowner, arrived at Moscow from Kazan. Aunt tatyana and all the children came there in the autumn. The elder brother of Tolstoy, who at that time was already a student of the first year in the university, greeted his aunt with the words: "Ne nous abandonnez pas, chere tante, il ne nous reste ques vous au monde." Her eyes filled with tears and she made up her mind "se sacrifier." What she meant by this no one knew; the result was that she at once began preparations for a journey to Kazan. For this purpose she ordered some boats which she loaded with everything she could carry away from Yasnaya Polyana. All the servants had to follow - carpenters, tailors, locksmiths, chefs, upholsterers, etc. Moreover, to each of the four brothers Tolstoy was attached a serf of about the same age, as man-servant. One of these was Vanyusha, who afterward accompanied Tolstoy to the Caucasus and who now spends his old age at his daughter's house in Tula.
At this time Tolstoy was twelve years old. Masters and servants started for the journey in autumn, and in numerous carriages and other vehicles crept slowly from Tula to Kazan. During the journey something like regular habits were maintained. Sometimes they stopped in the fields, sometimes in the woods, bathed, walked about and gathered mushrooms. The parting with Aunt Tatyana Aleksandrovna was distressing, but she had never been on friendly terms with Aunt Pelageya Ilyinishna, and, after the death of Aleksandra Ilyinishna, she settled with her sister, Helena Aleksandrovna Tolstaya, in the village of Pokrovskoye. The want of a good understanding between Tatyana Aleksandrovna and Pelageya Ilyinishna arose from the fact that the husband of the latter had been in love with Tatyana in his youth and made her an offer of marriage, which she rejected. Pelageya Ilyinishna could never forgive her husband's love for the other and hated her for it, though in public they appeared to be on thoroughly friendly terms.
Pelageya's husband , V.I. Yushkov, a retired colonel of hussars, has left behind him in Kazan the memory of an educated, witty, and kind-hearted man, who loved jokes and lively conversation, and such he remained until his death.
Pelageya herself was remembered in Kazan as a very kind, but not particularly clever woman. She was very pious, and after the death of her husband in 1869 she retired to the convent Optina Pustin. Later on she lived in a convent in Tula and finally moved to Yasnaya Polyana, where she fell ill and died.
All through her long life she strictly observed all the rites of the orthodox church; but in her eightieth year, before her death, which she greatly feared, she declined to take the communion and grew angry with other people on account of the misery which she suffered herself in the presentiment of her end.
Let us now point out certain stages in the moral development of children which we find in such of Tolstoy's novels as are descriptive of that period of life, and which carry, in our opinion, a real autobiographical character.
One trait often observable in children, and which perhaps existed in Tolstoy himself in a high degree, is extreme shyness - the outcome of self-consciousness.
People very often make a distinction between these two characteristics - self-consciousness and shyness. They find fault with the one and encourage the other, or vice versa, but the traits are merely the reverse sides of the same coin, and are related to one another as cause and effect. A man is often shy because he is self-conscious, and as the shyness increases it intensifies his self-consciousness. The former manifests itself on any trifling ground, for instance in consequence of misgivings as to one's appearance. This is how Tolstoy speaks of it in himself under the character of Nikolenka:
"I had the oddest conceptions of beauty - I even regarded Karl Ivanovich as the first beau in the world; but I knew full well that I was not good-looking, and in this opinion was not mistaken. Therefore, every reference to my looks was offensive to me....
"Moments of despair frequently came over me. I imagined that there was no happiness in the world for a man with such a broad nose, fat lips, and small gray eyes, as mine were. I asked God to do a miracle, and to change me into a handsome boy, and everything I then had, and everything I should ever have in the future, I would gladly have given for a pretty face."4
As soon as man turns his glance upon himself, a conflict of most varied feelings rises in him. If he is a man of intelligence and morality, he is bound to feel dissatisfaction, and the feeling must call forth a longing for improvement in things external, as well as in his own heart. As he has no power to improve the former, e.g., to make his nose more shapely, therefore it is perhaps painful to think about the matter. But, if the mind be strong, it will lead one to the path of inward self-perfecting, and thereby open the way of endless progress.
This is exactly the conflict of feeling and thought which we can follow in the child, boy, and youth presented to us by Tolstoy in Nikolenka Irtenev. In describing his development the author endows him with his own deep, rich inner world.
In a conversation with one of his friends, Tolstoy said that his early youth was spent under the influence of his brother Seryozha, and in attempts to imitate him. This brother he specially loved and admired. In somewhat riper years he was chiefly influenced by his brother Nikolay, whom he loved, not indeed so passionately as he did Seryozha, but still very dearly, and whom he respected more.5
Glancing through the novel Childhood, we find the account of a similar feeling in the description of the love of Nikolenka Irtenev for Seryozha Ivin.
These are the glowing words in which he depicts this affection:
"I felt unconquerably attracted by him. It was enough for my happiness to see him, and all the powers of my soul were concentrated upon this desire. When I passed three or four days without seeing him, I grew lonely, and felt sad enough to weep. All my dreams, waking and sleeping, were of him. When I lay down to sleep, I wished that I might dream of him; when I closed my eyes, I saw him before me, and I treasured this vision as my greatest pleasure. I did not dare intrust this feeling to anyone in the world, I valued it so.
"Perhaps he was tired of feeling my restless eyes continually directed toward him, or he did not feel any sympathy for me, but he visibly preferred to play and to talk with Volodya, rather than with me. I was, nevertheless, satisfied, wished for nothing, demanded nothing, and was ready to sacrifice everything for him.
"Under the name of the Ivins, I have described the Count's Pushkin boys, one of whom, Aleksandr, has just died - the one whom I liked so much in childhood. Our favourite game was playing at soldiers."6
Tolstoy thus depicts the turning-point in his development, the transition from childhood to boyhood:
"My reader, have you ever happened to notice at a certain stage of your life how your view of things completely changed, as though all the things which you used to know, heretofore, suddenly turned a different, unfamiliar side to you? Some such moral transformation took place in me for the first time, during our journey, and from this I count the beginning of my boyhood.
"I obtained for the first time a clear idea of the fact that we, that is, our family, were not alone in the world, that not all interests centered about us, and there was another life for people who had nothing in common with us, who did not care for us, and who even did not have any idea of our existence. To be sure, I knew it before; but I did not know it in the same manner as now - I was not conscious of it, did not feel it."7
At an early age the child had taken up philosophic argument, and even in his boyhood the path is foreshadowed by which his powerful mind was to be developed to influence so many others.
"People will hardly believe what the favorite and most constant subjects of my thoughts were during the period of my boyhood - for they were inconsistent with my age and station. But, according to my opinion, the inconsistency between a man's position and his moral activity is the surest token of truth....
"At one time it occurred to me that happiness did not depend on external causes, but on our relation to them; that a man who is accustomed to bear suffering could not be unhappy. To accustom myself to endurance, I would hold for five minutes at a time the dictionaries of Tatishchev in my outstretched hands, though it cause me unspeakable pain, or I would go into the lumber room and strike my bare back so painfully with a rope that the tears would involuntarily appear in my eyes.
"At another time, I happened to think that death awaited me at any hour and at any minute, and wondering how it was people had not seen this before me, I decided that man cannot be happy otherwise than by enjoying the present and not caring for the future. Under the influence of this thought, I abandoned my lessons for two or three days, and did nothing but lie on my bed and enjoy myself reading some novel and eating honey cakes which I bought with my last money.
"At another time, as I was standing at the blackboard and drawing various figures upon it with a piece of chalk, I was suddenly struck by the idea, Why is symmetry pleasant to the eye? What is symmetry? It is an implanted feeling, I answered myself. What is it based upon? Is symmetry to be found in everything in life? Not at all. Here is life - and I drew an oval figure on the board. After life the soul passes into eternity. Here is eternity - and I drew, on one side of the figure, a line to the very edge of the board. Why is there no such line on the other side of the figure? Really, what kind of eternity is that which is only on one side? We have no doubt existed before this life, although we have lost the recollection of it....
"By none of these philosophic considerations was I so carried away as by skepticism, which at one time led me to a condition bordering on insanity. I imagined that nothing existed in the whole world outside of me, that objects were no objects, but only images which appeared whenever I turned my attention to them, and that these images would immediately disappear when I no longer thought of them. In short, I held the conviction with Schelling that objects do not exist, but only my relation to them. There were moments when, under the influence of this fixed idea, I reached such a degree of absurdity that I sometimes turned in the opposite direction, hoping to take nothingness by surprise, where I was not."8
Boyhood ends by a description of Nikolenka Irtenev's friendship with Nekhlyudov.9 The conclusion of this novel expresses in a few words that ideal of man which Tolstoy has sought and followed all his life, and which he still seeks in the sunset of his days.
"Of course, under the influence of Nekhlyudov I involuntarily appropriated his point of view, the essence of which was an ecstatic worship of the ideal of virtue, and the conviction that a man's destiny is continually to perfect himself. At that time it seemed a practicable affair to correct humanity at large, to destroy all human vices and misfortunes - and therefore it looked easy and simple to correct oneself, to appropriate to oneself all virtues and be happy."10
It is evident that this tendency toward abstract thought, this timidity and shyness, this striving after an ideal - that all these qualities manifested in the child were the primitive elements which gradually formed the harmonious soul of the artist-thinker. We now see the full bloom of these spiritual germs which were planted in Tolstoy's boyhood.
Brought up in a patriarchally aristocratic and, in its way, religious atmosphere, Tolstoy, in his childhood, with his responsive soul, absorbed all he could and was sincerely religious. Hints of this we see in Childhood. But this "habitual" religiousness fell away at the first breeze of rationalism.
He speaks thus in his Confession about his religious education, given as it was in accordance with the views of those days:
"I was christened and educated in the faith of the Orthodox Greek Church; I was taught it in my childhood, and I learned it in my youth. Nevertheless, at eighteen years of age, when I quitted the university, I had discarded all belief in everything that I had been taught. To judge by what I can now remember, I could never have had a very serious belief; it must have been a kind of trust in this teaching, based on a trust in my teachers and elders, and a trust, moreover, not very firmly grounded.
"I remember once, in my eleventh year, a boy, now long since dead, Vladimir M---, a pupil in a gymnasium, spent a Sunday with us, and brought us the news of the last discovery in the gymnasium, namely, that there was no god, and that all we were taught on the subject was a mere invention. This was in 1838. I remember well how interested my elder brothers were in this news. I was admitted to their deliberations, and we all eagerly accepted the theory as something particularly attractive and possibly quite true."
But of course this rationalism could not shake the foundations of his soul. these foundations withstood terrible life-storms and brought him to the path of truth.
Tolstoy given interesting information concerning those literary works which, as far as he remembers, had great influence on his moral development during his childhood and boyhood, i.e., up to about fourteen years of age. Here is the list of the works:
The Titles - Degree of Influence
The Story of Joseph, from
the Bible - Powerful
Thousand and One Night Tales:
The Forth Thieves, Prince
Kamaralzaman - Great
The Black Fowl,
by Pogorelskiy - Very great
Russian Legends: Dobrinya
Nikitich, Ilya Muromets,
Alyosha Popovich - Powerful
Popular Tales, Pushkin's Verses:
Napoleon - Great
We shall now give a few episodes from Tolstoy's boyhood, partly written down from his own words, partly gathered from his relatives, but also borrowed from other sources which have already appeared in print, and which we have ourselves edited. In doing as above mentioned, we shall make a selection, being guided therein by authentic information which is in our possession. It is impossible to arrange the stories in a chronological order.
"It was quite at the beginning of our Moscow life, during my father's lifetime," Tolstoy once observed in describing his reminiscences, "that we had a pair of very spirited horses of our own breeding. My father's coachman was Mitka Kopilov. He was also my father's groom, a good horseman, sportsman, and excellent coachman, and, above all, an invaluable postilion. He was invaluable in this respect that a boy cannot manage spirited horses and an elderly man is too heavy and not suitable for a postilion, so that Mitka combined the rare qualities necessary for the purpose, which were: small stature, lightness, strength, and agility. I remember once the phaeton was brought to the door for my father, and the horses bolted out of the yard gate. Some one shouted, `The Count's horses have run away!' Pashenka was overcome. My aunts rushed to my grandmother to reassure her, but it turned out that my father had not yet entered the carriage, and Mitka cleverly arrested the horses and returned into the yard.
"Well, it was this same Mitka who, after the reduction of our expenses, was given freedom on ransom. Rich merchants competed in endeavoring to engage his services, and would have given him a big salary, as he already flaunted silk shirts and velvet jackets. It so happened that the turn came for his brother to be enlisted as a soldier, and his father, already aged, summoned Mitka home to do laborer's work for the master. And this small-sized, elegant Dmitriy in a month's time became transformed into a modest peasant, in bast shoes, working for the landlord, and cultivating his own two allotments, mowing, ploughing, and, in general, doing all the heavy peasant's task of that time. And all this was done without the slightest murmur, with the consciousness that this should be so, and could not be otherwise."
This was one of the events that fostered that love and respect for the people which Tolstoy used to feel even in childhood.
Here are two episodes which Tolstoy related to me, and which, according to his words, planted in his youthful mind germs of doubt and dissatisfaction - with the injustice and cruelty of those very people whom he still regarded as his "elders," and who always appeared to him as invested with a certain kind of authority. The authority of these people was being undermined even then.
While still a child, he was shown the unfairness, the worship of appearances, and the fashionable contempt for everything that is modest, the exhibition of which is so painful to childhood and directs the little ones especially to serious thoughts and promotes the development of their spiritual perception.
One illustration of the above was furnished by an incident connected with the Christmas-tree at Shipov's to which the Tolstoy children were invited, as they were related to the family. They had just lost their father and their grandmother and were orphans, cared for by an aunt who was in rather poor circumstances, and hence they did not possess much attraction or importance in fashionable society.
To the same Christmas-tree were invited the princes Gorchakov, nephews of the then Minister of War, and the Tolstoys observed with annoyance the difference which was made in the choice of presents for them and for the other more honored guests; the Tolstoys received presents of cheap wooden things, while the others had magnificent and expensive toys.
Another case took place in Moscow.
Once they went for a walk with their German tutor. Tolstoy, who was then nine or ten years old, his brothers and a girl named Yuzenka, a daughter of the French governess, who lived with their neighbors, the Islenevs, were among the children. Yuzenka was a very good-looking and attractive girl. While walking along Bolshaya Bronaya Street, they found themselves near a garden gate leading to Polyakov's house. The gate was not shut and they entered with some hesitation, not knowing what would happen; the garden seemed to them of an unusual beauty. There were a pond with boats, flags, and flowers, small bridges, paths, bowers, etc.; they walked round the garden as if it was enchanted, till they were met by a gentleman who appeared to be Astashov, the owner of the place. He greeted them affably and invited them to look round, gave them a row in a boat, and was so amiable that they thought their presence actually gave pleasure to the owner of the garden. Encouraged by their good fortune, they decided to visit this garden again in a few days. When they entered the gate they were stopped by an old man who asked whom they wanted to see. They gave their surname and begged to be announced to the master. Yuzenka was not with them. The old man returned with the answer that the garden belonged to a private individual and the public was forbidden to enter. They went away disappointed, and were unable to understand why their friend's pretty face should have made so great a difference in the attitude of strangers toward them.
Here are a few stories which indicate the originality, not to say eccentricity, of his boyish character.
"We were once assembled at dinner," said Mariya (Tolstoy's sister) to me; "it was in Moscow, during their grandmother's illness, when etiquette was adhered to and everybody had to appear in good time before grandmother came, and wait for her, so that all were surprised to see that Lyovochka was not there. When all were seated at the table, the grandmother, who had noticed his absence, asked St. Thomas, the tutor, what was the reason of it, and whether Leo had been punished. The tutor declared with some confusion that he did not know, but that he was certain that Leo would appear in a minute, but that he was probably detained in his room getting ready for dinner. The grandmother was put at her ease, but, before long, the assistant tutor entered and whispered something to St. Thomas, who immediately jumped up and hurriedly left the room. This was so unusual, considering the strict etiquette observed at dinner, that everybody concluded that some great misfortune had taken place; as Lyovochka was absent, every one was sure that he was the person who had met with a misfortune, and all anxiously awaited the return of St. Thomas.
"Soon the matter was cleared up and we learned what happened.
"For some unknown reason, Lyovochka (as he now tells us himself, simply to do something extraordinary and surprise the others) had conceived the idea of jumping from a second-story window, a height of several yards. And in order not to have this achievement hindered, he remained in the room alone when everybody else went to dinner. He climbed up to the open window in the attic and jumped into the yard. In the basement was the kitchen, and the cook was standing by the window, when, before she realized what was happening, Lyovochka struck the ground with a thud. We then informed the steward, and, stepping outside, they found Lyovochka lying in the yard in a state of unconsciousness. Luckily no bones were broken, and the injury was limited to a slight concussion of the brain; unconsciousness changed into sleep; he slept eighteen hours at a stretch and woke up quite sound. You may imagine what fear and anxiety were caused by the queer little fellow's unpremeditated act.
"Once the idea struck him that he would clip his eyebrows; and he carried it out, thus disfiguring a face which was never strikingly beautiful and causing himself a great deal of grief.
"Another time," related Mariya, "we were driving in a troika from Pirogovo to Yasnaya. During a pause in our journey, Lyovochka got down and walked on on foot. When he carriage was ready to set off again, he could not be found. Soon, however, the coachman beheld from his seat his disappearing figure on the road ahead of him, so the party started, believing he had gone on only with the intention of resuming his seat as soon as the troika caught him up; but this was a mistake. As the carriage approached, he quickened his pace, and when the horse was made to trot he began to run, apparently not desiring to take his seat. The troika advanced at a rapid pace and he also ran as hard as he could, and kept on running for about three versts, till at last he was tired out and gave it up. They got him to take his seat; but he was gasping for breath, perspiring, and broken down with fatigue."
Sofya Andreyevna, Tolstoy's wife, has many a time busied herself with putting down particulars of his life, asking him questions about his childhood, and listening to stories told by his relations. Unfortunately these notes are incomplete, but nevertheless they are very valuable. We quote a few extracts from them, availing ourselves of the kind permission of their writer.
"Judging by tales of old aunts who have told me a few things about my husband's childhood, and also by what my grandfather Islenev has said (he was very friendly with Nikolay Ilyich, Tolstoy's father), little Lyovochka was a peculiar child, in fact quite an odd little fellow. For instance, he once entered the saloon and made a bow to everybody backward, bending his head and courtesying.
"When I asked Tolstoy himself and also others if he studied well, I was answered that he 'did not.'"
S.A. Bers, Tolstoy's brother-in-law, relates the following in his reminiscences:
"P.I. Yushkova, Tolstoy's late aunt, declared that in his boyhood he was very frolicsome, and as a boy he was marked for his oddity, sometimes also for his impulsive acts, as well as for a noble heart.
"My mother related to me that in describing his first love in his work Childhood he omitted to say that, being jealous, he pushed the object of his love off the balcony. This was my mother, nine years old, who had to limp for a long time afterward. He did this because she was not talking to him but to somebody else. Later on, she used to laugh and say to him: `Evidently you pushed me off the terrace in my childhood that you might marry my daughter afterward.'"11
Tolstoy himself used to relate in the family circle, in my presence, that when he was a child of seven or eight years, he had an ardent desire to fly. He imagined that it was quite possible if you sat down on your heels and hugged your knees, and that the harder the knees were clasped the higher you could fly.
Several stories by Tolstoy, published in his Books for Reading, are autobiographical. We reproduce some characteristic passages from them.
In the tale, The Old Horse, Tolstoy relates how he and his three brothers got permission to have a ride. They were only allowed to ride on a quiet old horse called Voronok. The three elder brothers, after riding to their hearts' content and exhausting the horse, handed it over to him.
"When my turn came, I wanted to surprise my brothers and to show them how well I could ride, so I began to drive Raven [Voronok] with all my might, but he did not want to get away from the stable. And no matter how much I beat him, he would not run, but only shied and turned back. I grew angry at the horse, and struck him as hard as I could with my feet and with the whip. I tried to strike him in places where it would hurt most; I broke the whip, and began to strike his head with what was left of the whip. But Raven would not run. Then I turned back, rode up to the valet, and asked him for a stout switch. But the valet said to me:
"`Don't ride any more, sir! Get down! what use is therein torturing the horse?'
"I felt offended, and said:
"`But I have not had a ride yet. Just watch me gallop! Please, give me a good-sized switch! I will heat him up.'
"Then the valet shook his head and said:
"`Oh sir, you have no pity; why should you heat him up? He is twenty years old. The horse is worn out; he can barely breathe, and is old. He is so very old! Just like Pimen Timofeyich.12 You might just as well sit down on Timofeyich's back and urge him on with a switch. Now, would you not pity him?'
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