Leo Tolstoy

LEO TOLSTOY

BY

G. K. CHESTERTON, G. H. FERRIS

ETC.

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS

TORONTO
COPP CLARK COMPANY

LONDON : HODDER AND STOUGHTON

as

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

LK.O TOLSTOY. ... . .

TOI.STOV AS AN OKKICKR .......... 1

TOLSTOY ix ins STCDKXT DAYS ......... 52

VASXAYA POLYAXA, Tin. COUNTRY HO.MK OK COUNT TOLSTOY. . . .3

THK Ai'i'ROACH TO THK. PAHK AT VASXAYA POLYANA .... . . . 4

Tin. GATEWAY-ENTRANCE TO YASN\UA I'OLYAXA ...... 5

TOLSTOY WITH IMS HICYCLK. . . . . . . . . . .6

"Tm: TRK.K. OK TIM: POOR" .......... 7

TOLSTOY, AX KAKLY PORTRAIT ......... 7

C'orxT AXD CorxTKss TOLSTOY ......... 8

Li o TOLSTOY (from a Sketch by Victor Trout) ...... 9

COIXT TOLSTOY AT WORK IN THK PIKLDS ....... 10

I-'A< SIMII.K OK A PORTION OK TOLSTOY'S MS. ....... 11

COUNT TOLSTOY, HIS WIKK, AND DAI-CHTKRS ....... 12

TOLSTOY AT WORK ix HIS STUDY AT VASNAYA POLYAXA

TOLSTOY WIUTIXC; AT HIS DKSK . . . . . . . . . 1-t

OXK OK H. R. MILLAR'S ILLUSTRATIONS. ....... 15

COUNT TOLSTOY . . . . .. .. . . . .16

\ FAMOUS PAIXTIXI; OK TOLSTOY .... ^. .... 17

A PiioToiiKAiMi OK COUNT TOLSTOY TAKKX AT VASXAYA POLYAXA . . .18
RUSSIAN JAILI.R AND \\OMAX WARDKR . 19

IV

PAGE

20

A TOUSTOY MEDALLION. . . ' . .

THK COVER OF THK TRACT " WHKHK LOVK is, THERE GOD is ALSO" . 20

ONE OF THE POSTCARDS ISSUED IN Moscow IN 1898 TO COMMEMORATE

TOLSTOY'S LITERARY JUBILEE . v . . 21

Two OF THE POSTCARDS ISSUED AT Moscow IN 1898 TO COMMEMORATE

TOLSTOY'S LITERARY JUBILEE . . "". . . . •_ . .22

COUNT TOLSTOY AT REST (from a Painting by Repin) ... .23

TOLSTOY IN THE GROUNDS OF YASNAYA POLYANA ...... 24

ONE OF H. R. MILLAR'S ILLUSTRATIONS . . .25

ONE OF MANY BUSTS OF COUNT TOLSTOY .... . .26

A RECENT PORTRAIT OF COUNT TOLSTOY . . . . . .27

THE DEFENDANTS . . . , . . . . . . .29

TOLSTOY AND HIS DAUGHTER TATYANA . . * . . . .30

COUNT TOLSTOY AND HIS FAMILY . . . . . . . .31

LEO TOLSTOY (from a Portrait painted in 1884). . ... 33

MASLOVA'S RETURN TO THE WARD AFTER THE SENTENCE . . . .34

LEO TOLSTOY, 1896 (from a Photograph) ... . . . .35

TOLSTOY

I

TOLSTOY AS AN OFFICER

F any one wishes to form the fullest
estimate of the real character and
influence of the great man whose name
is prefixed to these remarks, he will not
find it in his novels, splendid as they
are, or in his ethical views, clearly and
finely as they are conceived and ex-
panded. He will find it best expressed
in the news that has recently come
from Canada, that a sect of Russian
Christian anarchists has turned all its
animals loose, on the ground that it is
immoral to possess them or control
them. About such an incident as this
there is a quality altogether indepen-
dent of the rightness or wrongness, the sanity or insanity, of the view.
It is first and foremost a reminder that the world is still young.
There are still theories of life as insanely reasonable as those which
were disputed under the clear blue skies of Athens. There are still
examples of a faith as fierce and practical as that of the Mahome-
tans, who swept across Africa and Europe, shouting a single word.
To the languid contemporary politician and philosopher it seems
doubtless like something out of a dream, that in this iron-bound,
homogeneous, and clockwork age, a company of European men in
boots and waistcoats should begin to insist on taking the horse out
of the shafts of the omnibus, and lift the pig out of his pig-sty, and
the dog out of his kennel, because of a moral scruple or theory.
It is like a page from some fairy farce to imagine the Doukhabor
solemnly escorting a hen to the door of the yard and bidding it
a benevolent farewell as it sets out on its travels. All this, as I

1

TOLSTOY

IN
HIS

STUDENT
DAYS

say, seems mere muddle-headed absurdity to the typical leader of
human society in this decade, to a man like Mr. Balfour, or
Mr. Wyndham. But there is nevertheless a further thing to be
said, and that is that, if Mr. Balfour could be converted to a religion
which taught him that he was morally bound to walk into the House
of Commons on his hands, and he did walk on his hands, if Mr.
Wyndham could accept a creed which taught that he ought to dye
his hair blue, and he did dye his hair blue, they would both "of
them be, almost beyond description, better and happier men than
they are. For there is only one happiness possible or conceivable
under the sun, and that is enthusiasm — that strange and splendid

TOLSTOY

8

YASNAYA POLYANA, THE COUNTRY HOME OF COUNT TOLSTOY

word that has passed through so many vicissitudes, which meant, in
the eighteenth century the condition of a lunatic, and in ancient
Greece the presence of a god.

This great act of heroic consistency which has taken place in
Canada is the best example of the work of Tolstoy. It is true (as
I believe) that the Doukhabors have an origin quite independent of
the great Russian moralist, but there can surely be little doubt that
their emergence into importance and the growth and mental dis-
tinction of their sect, is due to his admirable summary and justification
of their scheme of ethics. Tolstoy, besides being a magnificent
novelist, is one of the very few men alive who have a real, solid,
and serious view of life. He is a Catholic church, of which he is
the only member, the somewhat arrogant Pope and the somewhat
submissive layman. He is one of the two or three men in Europe,
who have an attitude towards things so entirely their own, that we
could supply their inevitable view on anything —a silk hat, a Home
Rule Bill, an Indian poem, or a pound of tobacco. There are three
men in existence who have such an attitude : Tolstoy, Mr. Bernard
Shaw, and my friend Mr. Hilaire Belloc. They are all diametrically
opposed to each other, but they all have this essential resemblance,

TOLSTOY

that, given their basis of thought, their soil of conviction, their
opinions on every earthly subject grow there naturally, like flowers
in a Held. There are certain views of certain things that they must
take ; they do not form opinions, the opinions form themselves.
Take, for instance, in the case of Tolstoy, the mere list of miscel-
laneous objects which I wrote down at random above, a silk hat,
a Home Rule Bill, an Indian poem, and a pound of tobacco. Tolstoy
would say: "I believe in the utmost possible simplification of life;
therefore, this silk hat is a black abortion." He would say : " I believe
in the utmost possible simplification of life ; therefore, this Home
Rule Bill is a mere peddling compromise ; it is no good to break
up a centralised empire into nations, you must break the nation up
into individuals." He would say : " I believe in the utmost possible
simplification of life ; therefore, I am interested in this Indian poem,
for Eastern ethics, under all their apparent gorgeousness, are far
simpler and more Tolstoyan than Western." He would say : " I
believe in the utmost possible simplification of life ; therefore, this
pound of tobacco is a thing of evil ; take it away." Everything in
the world, from the Bible to a bootjack, can be, and is, reduced by

Tolstoy to this great fundamental
Tolstoyan principle, the simplifica-
tion of life. When we deal with
a body of opinion like this we are
dealing with an incident in the
history of Europe infinitely more
important than the appearance of
Xapoleon Buonaparte.

This emergence of Tolstoy, with
his awful and .simple ethics, is im-
portant in more ways than one.
Among other things it is a very
interesting commentary on an atti-
tude which has been taken up for
the matter of half a century by all
the avowed opponents of religion.
The secularist and the sceptic have
denounced Christianity first and

THE APPROACH TO THE PARK AT
YASNAVA POLYANA

TOLSTOY

THE GATEWAY-ENTRANCE TO YASNAYA POLYANA

foremost, be-
c a use of its
encouragement
of fanaticism ;
because religious
excitement 1 e d
men to burn
their neighbours,
and to dance
naked down the
street. How
queer it all
sounds now.
Religion can be
swept out of the

matter altogether, and still there are philosophical and ethical theories
which can produce fanaticism enough to fill the world. Fanaticism has
nothing at all to do with religion. There are grave scientific theories
which, if carried out logically, would result in the same fires in the
market-place and the same nakedness in the street. There are
modern aesthetes who would expose themselves like the Adamites
if they could do it in elegant attitudes. There are modern scientific
moralists who would burn their opponents alive, and would be
quite contented if they were burnt by some new chemical process.
And if any one doubts this proposition — that fanaticism has nothing
to do with religion, but has only to do with human nature — let
him take this case of Tolstoy and the Doukhabors, A sect of
men start with no theology at all, but with the simple doctrine
that we ought to love our neighbour and use no force against
him, and they end in thinking it wicked to carry a leather hand-
bag, or to ride in a cart. A great modern writer who erases theology
altogether, denies the validity of the Scriptures and the Churches
alike, forms a purely ethical theory that love should be the instrument
of reform, and ends by maintaining that we have no right to strike
a man if he is torturing a child before our eyes. He goes on, he
develops a theory of the mind and the emotions, which might be held
by the most rigid atheist, and he ends by maintaining that the sexual

TOLSTOY

relation out of which all hu-
manity has come, is not only
not moral, but is positively not
natural. This is fanaticism as it
has been and as it will always
be. Destroy the last copy of
the Bible, and persecution and
insane orgies will be founded on
Mr. Herbert Spencer's " Synthe-
tic Philosophy." Some of the
broadest thinkers of the Middle
Ages believed in faggots, and
some of the broadest thinkers
in the nineteenth century be-
lieve in dynamite.

The truth is that Tolstoy,
with his immense genius, with
his colossal faith, with his vast
fearlessness and vast knowledge
of life, is deficient in one faculty
and one faculty alone. He is
not a mystic : and therefore he
has a tendency to go mad. Men
talk of the extravagances and
t'rcM/ies that have been produced by mysticism : they are a mere drop
in the bucket. In the main, and from the beginning of time, mys-
ticism has kept men sane. The thing that has driven them mad was
logic. It is significant that, with all that has been said about the
excitability of poets, only one English poet ever went mad, and he
went mad from a logical system of theology. He was Cowper> and
his poetry retarded his insanity for many years. So poetry, in which
Tolstoy is deficient, has always been a tonic and sanative thing. The
only thing that has kept the race of men from the mad extremes of
the convent and the pirate-galley, the night-club and the lethal
chamber, has been mysticism — the belief that logic is misleading, and
that things are not what they seem.

G. K. CHESTERTON.

TOLSTOY WITH HIS BICYCLE

(Photographed in 1896)

"THE TREK OF THE POOR"
Where Tolstoy receives the peasants and listens with unwearying patience to their tales of distress

LEO TOLSTOY AS WRITER

HALF the ignorance or misunderstanding of this greatest living
figure in literature comes of the attempt to judge him as \\ v
judge the specialised Western novelist — an utterly futile method of

approach. He is a Russian, in the first
place. Had he come to Paris with Tur-
guenieff, he might have been similarly
de-nationalised, might possibly have de-
veloped into a writer pure and simple ;
the world might so have gained a few
great romances it would have lost in-
finitely in other directions. TurgucniefF
wished it so. " My friend," he wrote to
Tolstoy from his deathbed, ** return to
literature ! Reflect that that gift comes
to you whence everything comes to us.
Ah ! how happy I should be if I could
think that my prayer would influence
you. . . . My friend, great writer of our
TOLSTOY, AN EARLY PORTRAIT Hussiaii land, \\enr my entreaty ! " For

TOLSTOY

COUNT
AND

COUNTESS
TOLSTOY

From a
Portrait taken

in
September 1895

(Reproduced
by kind permission .

from

"How Count Tolstoy
Lives and Works,"

by
P. A. Sergyeenko)

once, the second greatest of modern Russians took a narrow view
of character and destiny. Genius must work itself out on its own
lines. Tolstoy remained a Russian from tip to toe — that is one of
his supreme values for us ; and he remained an indivisible personality.
The artist and the moralist are inseparable in his works. " We are
not to take ' Anna Karenina ' as a work of art," said Matthew

TOLSTOY

Arnold; "we are to take it us a piece of life." The distinction is
not very satisfactorily stated, but the meaning is clear. So, too,
W. 1). Howells, in his introduction to an American edition of the
"Sebastopol Sketches": "I do not know how it is with others to
whom these books of Tolstoy's have come, but for my part I cannot
think of them as literature in the artistic sense at all. Some people
complain to me when I praise them that they are too long, too
diffuse, too confused, that the characters' names are hard to pro-
nounce, and that the life they portray is very sad and not amusing.
In the presence of these criticisms I can only say that I find them
nothing of the kind, but that each history of Tolstoy's is as clear,
as orderly, as brief, as something I have lived through myself. . . .
I cannot think of any service which imaginative literature has done
the race so great as
that which Tolstoy
has done in his con-
ception of Karenina
at that crucial mo-
rn e n t when the
cruelly outraged man
sees that he cannot
be good with dignity.
This leaves all tricks
of fancy, all effects
of art, immeasurably
behind." So much
being said, however,
we may be allowed
to emphasise in this
small space the great
qualities and achieve-
ments of Tolstoy as
artist, rather than the
expositions of Chris-
tian Anarchism and

. , * .,. LEO TOLSTOY, FROM A SKETCH BY VICTOR PROUT

SOCial phlllpplCS (Reproduced by kind permission of Mr. F. R. Henderson)

10

TOLSTOY

COUNT TOLSTOY AT WORK IN THE FIELDS

under which those achievements have been somewhat hidden in
recent years.

Morbid introspectiveness and the spirit of revolt inevitably colour
what is best in nineteenth-century Russia. Born at Yasnaya Polyana
<" Clear Field"), Tula, in 1828, and early orphaned, Tolstoy's youth

TOLSTOY

11

u^&*-^&&*?

FACSIMILE OF A PORTION OF TOLSTOY'S MS.

(Reproduced by kind permission of Messrs. Nisbet & Co., from " How Count Tolstoy Lives and Works,"

by P. A. Sergyeenko)

synchronised with the period of reaction that brought the Empire
to the humiliating disasters of the Crimean War. No hope was left
in the thin layer of society lying between the two mill-stones of
the Court and the serfs ; none in the little sphere of art where
Byronic romanticism was ready to expire. The boy saw from the
first the rottenness of the patriarchal aristocracy in which his lot
seemed to be cast. Precocious, abnormally sensitive and observant,
impatient of discipline and formal learning, awkward and bashful,
always brooding, not a little conceited, he was a sceptic, at fifteen, and
left the University of Kazan in disgust at the stupid conventions
of the time and place, without taking his degree. " Childhood,
Boyhood, and Youth " —which appeared in three sections between
185*2 and 1857 — tells the story of this period, though the figure
of Irtenieff is probably a projection rather than a-portrait of himself,
to whom he is always less fair, not to say merciful, than to others.
This book is a most uncompromising exercise in self-analysis. It
is of great length, there is no plot, and few outer events are recorded.

12

The realism is generally morbid, but is varied by some passages of
great descriptive power, such as the account of the storm, and
occasionally with tender pathos, as in the story of the soldier's death,
as well as by grimly vivid pages, such as the narrative of the
mother's death. In this earliest work will be found the seeds both
of Tolstoy's artistic genius and of his ethical gospel.

After five years of .mildly benevolent efforts among his serfs at
Vasnaya Polyana (the disappointments of which he related a few
years later in " A Landlord's Morning," intended to have been part

of a full novel to be called " A Rus-
sian Proprietor "), his elder brother
Nicholas persuaded him to join the
army, and in 1851 he was drafted to
the Caucasus as an artillery officer.
On this favourite stage of classic
Russian romance, where for the first
time he saw the towering mountains,
and the tropical sun, and met the
rugged adventurous highlanders, Tol-
stoy felt his imagination stirred as
Byron among the isles of Greece, and
his early revulsion against city life
confirmed as Wordsworth amid the
Lakes, as Thoreau at Walden, by a
direct call from Nature to his own
heart. The largest result of this ex-
perience was "The Cossacks " (1852).
Turguenieff described this fine prose
epic of the contact of civilised and
savage man as "the best novel written
in our language." " The Raid " (or
" The Invaders," as Mr. Dole's trans-
lation is entitled), dating from tlie
same year, " The Wood - Cutting
Expedition" (1855), "Meeting an
Old Acquaintance" (1856), and "A

COUNT TOLSTOY, HIS WIFE, AND
DAUGHTERS

14

TOLSTOY

TOLSTOY WRITING AT HIS DESK

Prisoner in the Caucasus " (1862) are also drawn from recollections
of this sojourn, and show the same descriptive and romantic power.
Upon the outbreak of the Crimean War the Count was called to
Sebastopol, where he had command of a battery, and took part
in the defence of the citadel. The immediate product of these
dark months of bloodshed was the thrilling series of impressions
reprinted from one of the leading Russian reviews as " Sebastopol
Sketches" (1856). From that day onward Tolstoy knew and told
the hateful truth about war and the thoughtless pseudo-patriotism
which hurries nations into fratricidal slaughter. From that day
there was expunged from his mind all the cheap romanticism
which depends upon the glorification of the savage side of human
nature. These wonderful pictures of the routine of the battlefield
established his position in Russia as a writer, and later on created
in Western countries an impression like that of the canvases of
Verestchagin.

TOLSTOY

15

For a brief time Tolstoy became a figure in the old and new
capitals <>!' Russia by right of talent as well as birth. His \ < TV
chequered friendship with TuTguenieff, one of the oddest chapters
in literary history, can only be mentioned here. In 1857 he travelled
in (lermany. France, and Italy. It was of these years that he
declared in **Mv Confession" that he could not think of them without
horror, disgust, and pain of heart. The catalogue of crime which lie
charged against himself in his Salvationist crisis of twenty years later
must not be taken literally ; but that there was some ground for it
we may guess from the scenic and incidental realism of the " Recol-
lections of a Billiard Marker" (18o<>), and of many a later page.
Several other powerful short novels date from about this time,
including " Albert " and " Lucerne," both of which remind us of
the Count's susceptibility to music ;
" Polikushka," a tale of peasant life ;
and " Family Happiness," the story
of a marriage that failed, a most
clear, consistent, forceful, and in parts
beautiful piece of work, anticipating
in essentials " The Kreutzer Sonata "
that was to scandalise the world thirty
years afterward.

After all, it was family happiness
that saved Leo Tolstoy. For the third
time the hand of death had snatched
away one of the nearest to him — his
brother Nicholas. Two years later, in
18(>2, he married Miss Behrs, daughter
of the army surgeon in Tula — the most
fortunate thing that has happened to
him in his whole life, I should think.
Family responsibilities, those novel
and daring experiments in peasant
education which are recorded in several
volumes of the highest interest, the
supervision of the estate, magisterial

One of H. R. Millar's illustrations in the
English edition of " Where Love is, there God
is also," reproduced by kind permission of Messrs.
Walter Scott, Ltd., the publishers .

16

TOLSTOY

work, and last, but
not least, the pro-
longed labours upon
"War and Peace" and
" Anna Karenina " fill
up the next fifteen
years. , " War and
Peace" (1864-9) is a
huge panorama of the
Napoleonic campaign
of 1812, with preced-
ing and succeeding
episodes in Russian
society. These four
volumes display in
their superlative
degree Tolstoy's in-
difference to plot and
his absorption in in-
dividual character ;
they are rather a series
of scenes threaded
upon the fortunes of
several families than
a set novel ; but they
contain passages of

penetrating psychology and vivid description, as well as a certain
amount of anarchist theorising. Of this work, by which its author
became known in the West, Flaubert (how the name carries us
backward !) wrote : " It is of the first order. What a painter and
what a psychologist ! The two first volumes are sublime, but the
third drags frightfully. There are some quite Shakespearean things
in it." The artist's hand was now strengthening for his highest
attainment. In 1876 appeared " Anna Karenina," his greatest, and
as he intended at the time (but Art is not so easily jilted), his
last novel. The fine qualities of this book, which, though long, is

COUNT TOLSTOY

17

A FAMOUS PAINTING OF TOLSTOY

dramatically unified and vitally coherent, have been so fully recog-
nised that I need not attempt to describe them. Mr. George
Meredith has described Anna as "the most perfectly depicted
female character in all fiction," which, from the author of " Diana,"

•2

18

TOLSTOY

PHOTOGRAPH

OF
COUNT TOLSTOY

TAKEN AT
! YASNAYA POLYANA

(Reproduced

from "Anna Karenina "

by kind permission

of
I Messrs Walter Scott Ltd.)

is praise indeed. Parallel with the main subject of the illicit love
of Anna and Vronsky there is a minor subject in the fortunes
of Levin and Kitty, wherein the reader will discover many of
Tolstoy's own experiences. Matthew Arnold complained that the
book contained too many characters and a burdensome multiplicity
of actions, but praised its author's extraordinarily fine perception
and no less extraordinary truthfulness, and frankly revelled in Anna's

TOLSTOY

1!)

RUSSIAN JAILER AND WOMAN WARDER
" The jailer, rattling the iron padlock, opened the door ol the cell "

(From an illustration by Pasternak in the English Edition of " Resurrection," reproduced by. kind permission o!

Mr. F. R. Henderson)

" large, fresh, rich, generous, delightful nature." " When I had
ended my work ' Anna Karenina,' " said Tolstoy in "My Confes-
sion" (1870-82), "my despair reached such a height that I could
do nothing but think of the horrible condition in which I found
myself. ... I saw only one thing — Death. Everything else was a
lie." Of that spiritual crisis nothing need be said here except that
it only intensified, and did not really, as it seemed to do, vitally
change, principles and instincts which had possessed Tolstoy from
the beginning. His subsequent ethical and religious development
may be traced in a long series of books and pamphlets, of which
the most important are " The Gospels Translated, Compared, and
Harmonised" (1880-2), "What I Believe" ["My Religion"], pro-
duced abroad in 1884, "What is to be Done?" (1884-5), "Life"
(1887), "Work" (1888), "The Kingdom of God is Within You"
(1893), "Non-Action" (1894). "Patriotism and Christianity" (189G)—

20

TOLSTOY

A TOLSTOY MEDALLION

crusade, in the foreign and the
clandestine presses at least,
against all Imperial authority
and social maladjustments. Mr.
Tchertkoff, Mr. Aylmer Maude,
the " Brotherhood Publishing
Co.," and the "Free Age Press"
deserve praise for their efforts to
popularise these and other works
of the Count in thoroughly good
translations. In "What is Art?"
(1898), not content with the bare
utilitarian argument that it is
merely a means of social union,
he launched a jehad against all
modern ideas of Art which rely
upon a conception of beauty and
all ideas of beauty into which
pleasure enters as a leading con-
stituent. A short but luminous
essay on " Guy de Maupassant
and the Art of Fiction " is a

a scathing attack upon militarism
in general and the Franco-Russian
Alliance in particular — "The Chris-
tian Teaching " (1898), and " The
Slavery of our Times " (1900).
Various letters on the successive
famines and on the religious per-
secutions in Russia deserve separate
mention; they remind us that since
the failure of the revolutionary
movement miscalled " Nihilism,"
Tolstoy has gradually risen to the
position of the one man who can
continue with impunity a public

THE COVER OF THE TRACT "WHERE LOVE
IS, THERE GOD IS ALSO "

TOI-STOV

21

more satisfactory con-
tribution to the subject.
It is more to our
purpose to note that in
this volcanic and fecund
if fundamentally simple
personality the artist
has dogged the steps of
the evangelist to the
last. "Master and
Man" (1895) is one of
the most exquisite short
stories ever written.
"The Death of Ivan
Ilyitch" (1884) and
"Resurrection" (1899)
are in some ways the
most powerful of all
his works. The much-
condemned "Do-
minion of Darkness "
(1886) and " Kreutzer Sonata" (1889) will be more fairly judged
when the average Englishman has learned the supreme merit of that
uncompromising truthfulness which gives nobility to every line the
grand Russian ever wrote. To submit a work like " Resurrection " to
the summary treatment which the ordinary novel receives and merits
is absurd. It is a large picture of the fall and rise of man done by
the swift and restless hand of a master who stands in a category
apart, with an eye that sees externals and essentials with like accuracy
and rapidity. Because the dramatic quality of these living pictures
lies, not in their organisation into a conventionally limited plot,
but first in the challenging idea upon which they are founded, then
the inexorable development of individual characters, and ever and
anon in the grip of particular episodes, the little critics scoff. The
idea, the characters, the episodes are all too real and vital for their
precious British self-complacency. The grandmotherly AiKcnasum

ONE OF THE POSTCARDS ISSUED IN MOSCOW IN 1898 TO
COMMEMORATE TOLSTOY'S LITERARY JUBILEE

22

TOLSTOY

permits some person to
describe this Promethean
figure as "a precious vase
that has been broken,"
and can now only be
pieced together to make
"the ornament of a
museum," — which re-
minds me that I heard a
lecturer before a well-
known literary society in
London describe him
lately as a "scavenger," and that a city bookseller assured me the
other day that there was something almost amounting to a boycott
against his fiction in the shops. The publisher who is preparing a
complete edition of Tolstoy— enormous work! — knows better, knows
that Tolstoy is one of the world-spirits whose advance out of the

TWO OF THE POSTCARDS ISSUED AT MOSCOW
IN 1898 TO COMMEMORATE TOLSTOY'S
LITERARY JUBILEE

TOLSTOY

28

ohscurity <>t'a hcniulitcd laud into UK- largest contemporary rimilat ion
is hut a tort-taste of an influence' that will soon IK- co-extensive with
tin- commonwealth of thinking men and women.

His sen ice to literature is precisely the same as his service to
morals. Like Human and Hums, Dickens and Whitman, he throws
down in a world of decadent conventions the tfau^e of the demo-
cratic ideal. As he calls the politician and the social reformer hack
to the land and the common people, so he calls the artist hack to
the- elemental forces ever at work beneath the surface-show of nature
and humanity. With an extraordinary penetration into the hidden
recesses of character, he joins a terrihle truthfulness, and that ahsolute

COUNT TOLSTOY

AT KKST.

From a Painting
by Rcpin,

(Reproduced by kind

permisMon from

" How Tolstoy l.ivc-.

and Works, "

by
I". A.

24

TOLSTOY

direct,

process.

beyond

TOLSTOY IN THE GROUNDS OF
YASNAYA POLYANA

simplicity of manner which we
generally associate with genius. He
is a realist, not merely of the outer,
hut more especially of the inner
life. There is no staginess, no senti-
mentality, in his work. He has no
heroes in our Western sfense, none,
even, of those sensational types of
personality which glorify the name
of his Northern contemporary,
Ibsen. His style is always natural,

irresistible as a physical
He has rarely strayed

the channel of his own
experience, and the reader who
prefers breadth to depth of know-
ledge must seek elsewhere. He
has little humour, but a grimly
satiric note has sometimes crept
into his writing, as Archdeacon
Farrar will remember. Of artifice
designed for vulgar entertainment
he knows nothing ; in the world
of true art, which is the wine-press
of the soul of man, he stands, a
princely figure. Theories, prescrip-
tions, and discussions are forgotten,
and we think only with love and
reverence of this modern patriarch,
so lonely amid the daily enlarging
congregation of the hearts he has
awakened to a sense of the mys-
tery, the terror, the joy, the
splendour of human destinies.

G. H. FERRIS.

TOLSTOY'S PLACE IN EUROPEAN

LITERATURE

1" 1 1 K justness of the word great applied to a nation's writers is
perhaps best tested by simply taking each writer in tuni
from out his Age, and seeing how far our conception of his Age
remains unaffected. We may take away hundreds of clever writers.

scores of distinguished creators, and
the Age remains before our eyes, solidly
unaffected by their absence ; but touch
one or two central figures, and lo ! the
whole framework of the Age gives in
your hands, and you realise that the
\Vorld's insight into, and understand-
ing of that Age's life has been supplied
us by the special interpretation offered
by two or three great minds. In fact,
every Age seems dwarfed, chaotic, full
of confused tendencies and general
contradiction till the few great men
have arisen, and symbolised in them-
selves what their nation's growth or
strife signifies. How many dumb ages
are there in which no great writer has
appeared, ages to whose inner life in
consequence we have no key !

Tolstoy's significance as the great
writer of modern Russia can scarcely
be augmented in Uussian eyes by his
exceeding significance to Europe as

One of H. R. Millar's illustrations in the " ...

English edition of " What Men Live By " (written SymbollSlIlg tllC Spiritual UnrCSt Of tllC
in 1881), reproduced by kind permission of •. » •• x •• » • -.it

Messrs. Waher Scott, Ltd., the publishers modem WOTlCL 1 Ct SO HieVltahlv

26

TOLSTOY

ONE
OF THE

MOST

STRIKING

OF THE

MANY
BUSTS OF

COUNT
TOLSTOY

must the main stream of each age's tendency and the main move-
ment of the world's thought be discovered for us by the great
writers, whenever they appear, that Russia can no more keep
Tolstoy's significance to herself than could Germany keep Goethe's
to herself. True it is that Tolstoy, as great novelist, has been
absorbed in mirroring the peculiar world of half-feudal, modern

l-y\

A RECEN'T PORTRAIT OF COUNT TOLSTOY

\Rck Mat iM, Zs,>fn«

28 TOLSTOY

Russia, a world strange to Western Europe, but the spirit of analysis
with which the creator of " Anna Karenina " and " War and Peace 5>
has confronted the modern world is more truly representative of our
Age's outlook than is the spirit of any other of his great con-
temporaries. Between the days of " Wilhelm Meister " and of
" Resurrection " what an extraordinary volume of the rushing tide
of modern life has swept by ! A century of that '* liberation of
modern Europe from the old routine " has passed since Goethe
stood forth for " the awakening of the modern spirit." A century
of emancipation, of Science, of unbelief, of incessant shock, change,
and Progress all over the face of Europe, and even as Goethe a
hundred years ago typified the triumph of the new intelligence of
Europe over the shackles of its old institutions, routine, and dogma
(as Matthew Arnold affirms), so Tolstoy to-day stands for the triumph
of the European soul against civilisation's routine and dogma. The
peculiar modernness of Tolstoy's attitude, however, as we shall pre-
sently show, is that he is inspired largely by the modern scientific
spirit in his searching analysis of modern life. Apparently at war
with Science and Progress, his extraordinary fascination for the
mind of Europe lies in the fact that he of all great contemporary
writers has come nearest to demonstrating, to realising what the life
of the modern man is. He of all the analysts of the civilised man's
thoughts, emotions, and actions has least idealised, least beautified,
and least distorted the complex daily life of the European world.
With a marked moral bias, driven onward in his search for truth by
his passionate religious temperament, Tolstoy, in his pictures of life,
has constructed a truer whole, a human world less bounded by the
artist's individual limitations, more mysteriously living in its vast
flux and flow than is the world of any writer of the century. *' War
and Peace " and " Anna Karenina," those great worlds where the
physical environment, mental outlook, emotional aspiration, and
moral code of the whole community of Russia are reproduced by
his art, as some mighty cunning phantasmagoria of changing life;
are superior in the sense of containing a whole nation's life, to the
worlds of Goethe, Byron, Scott, Victor Hugo, Balzac, Dickens,
Thackeray, Maupassant, or any latter day creator we can name.

TOLSTOY

THE
DEFENDANTS

" The third prisoner
was Ma-slova "

(From an illustration
by Pasternak

in the

English Edition or

" Resurrection,"

reproduced by

kind permission of

Mr. F. R.

Henderson)

And not only so, but Tolstoy's analysis of life throws more light on
the main currents of thought in our Age, raises deeper problems, and
explores more untouched territories of the mind than does any
corresponding analysis by his European contemporaries.

It is by Tolstoy's passionate seeking of the life of the soul that the

30

TOLSTOY

great Russian writer towers above the men of our day, and it is because
his hunger for spiritual truth has led him to probe contemporary life,
to examine all modern formulas and appearances, to penetrate into
the secret thought and emotion of men of all grades in our complex
society, that his work is charged with the essence of nearly all that
modernity thinks and feels, believes and suffers, hopes and fears as it
evolves in more and more complex forms of our terribly complex
civilisation. The soul of humanity is, however, always the
appeal of men from the life that environs, moulds, and burdens
them, to instincts .that go beyond and transcend their present
life. Tolstoy is the appeal of the modern world, the cry of the
modern conscience '. against the blinded fate of its own progress.
To the eye of science everything is possible in human life, the
sacrifice of the innocent .for the sake of the progress of the guilty,

32 TOLSTOY

the crushing and deforming of the weak so that the strong may
triumph over them, the evolution of new serf classes at the dictates
of a ruling class. All this the nineteenth century has seen accom-
plished, and not seen alone in Russia. It is Tolstoy's distinction
to have combined in his life-work more than any other great artist
two main conflicting points of view. He has fused by his art the
science that defines the way Humanity is forced forward blindly and
irresponsibly from century to century by the mere pressure of events,
he has fused with this science of our modern world the soul's protest
against the earthly fate of man which leads the generations into taking
the ceaseless roads of evil which every age unwinds.

Let us cite Tolstoy's treatment of War as an instance of how
this great artist symbolises the Age for us and so marks the advance
in self-consciousness of the modern mind, and as a nearer approxima-
tion to a realisation of what life is. We have only got to com-
pare Tolstoy's "Sebastopol" (1856) with any other document on
war by other European writers to perceive that Tolstoy alone
among artists has realised war, his fellows have idealised it.
To quote a passage, from a former article let us say that
" ' Sebastopol ' gives us war under all aspects — war as a squalid,
honourable, daily affair of mud and glory, of vanity, disease, hard
work, stupidity, patriotism, and inhuman agony. Tolstoy gets the
complex effects of ' Sebastopol ' by keenly analysing the effect of
the sights and sounds, dangers and pleasures, of war 011 the brains
of a variety of typical men, and by placing a special valuation of his
own on these men's actions, thoughts, and emotions, on their courage,
altruism, and show of indifference in the face of death. He lifts
up, in fact, the veil of appearances conventionally drawn by society
over the actualities of the glorious trade of killing men, and he
does this chiefly by analysing keenly the insensitiveness and in-
difference of the average mind, which says of the worst of war's
realities, * I felt so and so, and did so and so : but as to -what
those other thousands may have felt in their agony, that I did
riot enter into at all.' * Sebastopol,' therefore, though an exceed-
ingly short and exceedingly simple narrative, is a psychological
document on modern war of extraordinary value, for it simply

LEO TOLSTOY, FROM A PORTRAIT PAINTED IN 1884

34

TOLSTOY

MAM. OVA'S RETfUN TO THK WARD AFTER THE SEX'I ENCE

" She could bear it no longer ; her face quivered and she burst into sobs "

(From an illustration by Pasternak in the English Edition of "Resurrection" reproduced by kind permission

of Mr. F. R. Henderson)

relegates to the lumber-room, as imlife-like and hopelessly limited,
all those theatrical glorifications of war which men of letters, romantic
poets, and grave historians alike have been busily piling up on
humanity's shelves from generation to generation. And more : we
feel that in ' Sebastopol ' we have at last the sceptical modern spirit,
absorbed in actual life, demonstrating what war is, and expressing at
length the confused sensations of countless men, who have heretofore
never found a genius who can make humanity realise what it knows
half-consciously and consciously evades. We cannot help, therefore,
recognising this man Tolstoy as the most advanced product of our
civilisation, and likening him to a great surgeon, who, not deceived
by the world's presentation of its own life, penetrates into the
essential joy and suffering, health and disease of multitudes of men ;
a surgeon who, face to face with the strangest of Nature's laws in the

TOLSTOY

85

constitution <>!' human
society, pu/./.led by all
tin- illusions, fatuities.
and convent inns of
the human mind, reso-
lutely sets himself to
lay hare the foots of
all its passions, appe-
tites, and incentives in
the struck- for life, so
that at least human
reason may advance
farther along the path
of self-knowledge in
Advancing towards a
general sociological
study of man."

Tolstoy's place in
nineteenth-century
literature is, therefore.
in our view, no less
fixed and certain than
is Voltaire's place in
the eighteenth cen-
tury. Both of these
writers focus for us in
a marvellously complete manner the respective methods of analysing
life by which the rationalism of the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, and the science and humanitarianism of the nineteenth
century have moulded for us the modern world. All the movements,
all the problems, all the speculation, all the agitations of the world of
to-day in contrast with the immense materialistic civilisation that
science has hastily built up for us in three or four generations, all the
xjurif of modern life is condensed in the pages of Tolstoy's writings,
because, as we have said, he typifies the soul of the nuxlern man
ga/ing, now undaunted, and now in alarm, at the formidable army

LKO TOLSTOY, 189
(Front a Photograph)

36 TOLSTOY

of the newly-tabulated cause and effect of humanity's progress, at
the appalling cheapness and waste of human life in Nature's hands.
Tolstoy thus stands for the modern soul's alarm in contact tc/t/i
science. And just as science's work after its first destruction of the
past ages' formalism, superstition, and dogma is directed more and
more to the examination and amelioration of human life, so Tolstoy's
work has been throughout inspired by a passionate love of humanity,
and by his ceaseless struggle against conventional religion, dogmatic
science, and society's mechanical influence on the minds of its
members. To make man more conscious of his acts, to show
society its real motives and what it is feeling, and not cry out
in admiration at what it pretends to feel — this has been the great
novelist's aim in his delineation of Russia's life. Ever seeking
the one truth — to arrive at men's thoughts and sensations under
the daily pressure of life — never flinching from his exploration of
the dark world of man's animalism and incessant self-deception,
Tolstoy's realism in art is symbolical of our absorption in the world
of fact, in the modern study of natural law, a study ultimately without
loss of spirituality, nay, resulting in immense gain to the spiritual life.
The reaKstii of the great Russian's novels is, therefore, more in line
with the modern tendency and outlook than is the general tendency
of other schools of Continental literature. And Tolstoy must be
finally looked on, not merely as the conscience of the Russian world
revolting against the too heavy burden which the Russian people
have now to bear in Holy Russia's onward march towards the build-
ing-up of her great Asiatic Empire, but also as the soul of the modern
world seeking to replace in its love of humanity the life of those old
religions which science is destroying day by day. In this sense
Tolstoy will stand in European literature as the conscience of the
modern world.

EDWAKD GAKNETT.

Count Tolstoy

Tolstoy In his
Student days
see page 2

Y asnaya Polyana
seepage 3

Tho Gateway to

Yasnaya Polyana
seepage 5

The Approach
to the Park
see page 4

" The Tree of the
Poor "

see page 7

BIOGRAPHICAL NoTK

l.\ert" Nikolaevitch Tol-toy wa- Imrn at N.i-n.iy.t l'u|\;in;i mi Aufc'ii-t 2Hth
(September !»tli new -tyle). 1H-H. Hi- father. Count S'icliohi» ToUtny. wa.
a member of the nli| Russian nobility. In IHI.'I. after tin* t.ieg«« of Krfurt. he
wa- taken pri-oner by the French anil afterward- retired from tin- army holding
tin- rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. Having a— inncd tin- burden of many family
debt-, be roOOeaded in paying liis rr<Mlitnr- in full, thu- cainim.' a reputation
for Unfailing penevenuice. Tol-toy lia- de-cribcd hi- character in "Child-
hood anil Youth." "He was a man of tin- la-t century." hi- wrote, "and.
like all his contemporaries, ho had in him >omcthing chivalrou-, entcrpri-ini.'.
Belf-pOM6Med. amiable, a pa— ion fur plea-lire. . . . Hi- lift- wa- -<• full nf
all kinds of impulse that he had no time to think ahout conviction- ; and
besides, he had heen so happy all his life that he did not feel it m-ctntMiry
to dn so." His father died before ToUtoy reached the aire often year-, -even
year- after the death of his mother, of whom he wrote : " \Vheii I try to
recall to mind my mother as she was then, only her brown eye- ari-e before
me, always the same look of love and kindne— in them. If during the ino-t
trying moments of my life 1 could have caught a glimpse of her -mile, I
should not have known what grief is."

Tolstoy's early years were pa»ed in the country on the old-fa-biom-d
Russian estate, which resembled somewhat in patriarchal hahit-. ari-tocratic
manners, democratic familiarity, shiftlessness, and supcr-tition, a Southern
Plantation in the days of slavery. After the deatli of his father in HM~ the
family was taken charge of by an aunt, the Countess Alexandra O-ten-Saken.
and three years later by relatives ot his mother who lived at Ka/an. In 1H-M
TnUtoy entered the University of Kazan, where " lm|M-rvioiis to the ambitions
of scholarship and research, unimpressed by the provincial ari-tocracy. too
nice to enjoy the rou^h revels of the students, and replied alike from
aristocrats, j)rofessors, and students by an unsocial and what, with our Knt:li-h
emphasis on ffovernment, we should call an unregulated di-po-:tion. he seem-
to have had during these two or three years a thoroughly unhappy and
unprofitable experience." ' Having left the I niversity in 1H'.:»; without
^raduatiiiff he returned to the old country home. ^ asnaya I'olvana dex-enileil to
Tolstoy from his mother. The estate, which covers an area of <ome L'..VMI acre-,
partly arable and partly wooded, lies a hundred miles due south of Mo-row.
It was at one time Tolstoy's intention to dispossess himself entirely ot hi-
property and live as a peasant. Instead of this, however, he ha- made oxer
the whole of the land to his wife and children, and lives in the hoii-e nomin-
ally as a guest.

At the entrance to the park are two towers, medieval in -tyle. which were
erected by Tolstoy's maternal grandfather. From them the road runs
through the park, rising as it approaches the house, and In-come- mcrired in a
level avenue of birch trees. (Jlimpses of a pond are caught through the
deii-e foliage and of a square smoothly rolled sjiace u-ed a- a tcnni—
ground, the game being one in which Count Tolstoy jwirticipates with great
enjoyment. It will be noticed that in the photograph on page .'U he i- hold-
ing a tennis racket in his hand.

The house itself is a plain white rectangular two-storied building of
stuccoed brick, and it would be hard to imagine a simpler and le— pretentious
place than the home in which Tolstoy has -|>ent the greater |>art of hi- life.
It boasts neither pia/./a- nor towers ; indeed, noa'rchitectural ornament- of any
kind, nor are vines or other creein-rs trained U|MHI the flat wall- to relieve
their striking whitenes- or -often their rectangular outlines. The house was
not completed all at once, but wa- enlarged in pro|>ortion to the need- of the
family. On one side, devoid of windows, there is a low iM>rch. near which
-tand- an old elm tree, called " The Tree of the Poor." ( lo-e to it- trunk is
1 " Leo Tolstoy," by G. II. Perii-.
37

38

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Tolstoy as an
Officer

see page i

Count Tolstoy
and his wife
see page 8

Count Tolstoy at
work in the
fields

a bench on which the peasants sit to await the coming of Count Tolstoy.
Here lie listens with unwearying patience to many stories of distress and
difficulty, and gives in return, not only sympathy and advice, but such material
assistance as may lie at his command.

It was during the period following upon his University career that Tolstoy
threw all his energies into the task of raising both the economical and moral
standard of peasant life, and suffered much disappointment at the hands of the
peasants, who refused to allow him to pull down their dilapidated hovels even
that he might erect new and convenient ones at his own cost. The result was
that Tolstoy left Yasnaya Polyana for St. Petersburg in the autumn of 1847,
resolved to prosecute his studies with the intention of taking a degree in law.
With this choice of a career, however, he was dissatisfied, and returned again
to his estate in 1848.

For a few years he lived the ordinary life of the Russian nobleman,
enlisting at the age of 23 as cadet in a regiment of artillery in which his
elder brother Nicholas was captain. Discontented with the idle life he was
leading and out of harmony with his gay surroundings, he decided to jot
down his recollections of the homeland he loved so well, and it was at this
time that he commenced writing "Childhood and Youth" (which, however,
was not published in its complete form until six years later) and " The
Cossacks."

Subsequently Tolstoy was appointed to a post on Prince GortchakofFs
staff in Turkey, and was present at Sevastopol in 18-55, having attained
the rank of divisional commander. His experiences during the war are
pictured in his three sketches, "Sevastopol in December 18.54," "In May
185-5," and "In August 18,5.5." These were published the following year and
at once made his literary reputation. At the end of the campaign he left the
army and visited Western Europe, in order to study various school systems,
and upon his return to Yasnaya Polyana he established several schools of
his Own. - .

In September 1862 Tolstoy married Sophia Andreevna Behrs, the
daughter of a military doctor. He was at this time thirty-four years of age,
his bride being sixteen years younger. Miss Behrs was not only beautiful, she
was an exceedingly cultured girl, having passed various examinations at the
Moscow University. According to her brother, the manner of their courtship
was practically identical with that of Levin and Kitty in "Anna Karenina."
Countess Tolstoy at the age of forty-eight is described by Sergyeenko in " How
Count Tolstoy Lives and Works," as having " An open, expressive counte-
nance, with vivacious, fearless eyes, which she constantly brings near to the
objects at which she is looking. At her very first words one feels her
straightforward nature. In her manner there is not even a shadow of truck-
ling to suit the tone of any one whomsoever ; her own individual note is
always audible."

About the time of his marriage, Tolstoy was described as " a tall, wide-
shouldered thin-waisted man, with a moustache^ but without a beard, with
a serious, even a gloomy expression of face, which, however, was softened by
a gleam of kindliness whenever he smiled."

Living at Yasnaya Polyana winter and summer, with but rare intervening
visits to Moscow, Tolstoy interested himself in all the practical details of
farming. Probably his own experiences of the physical labour of mowing
are depicted as those of Levin in "Anna Karenina." "The work went
on and on. Levin absolutely lost all idea of time, and did not knofr
whether it was early or late. Though the sweat stood on his face, and
dropped from his nose, and all his back was wet as though he had been
plunged in water, still he felt very well. His work now seemed to him full
of pleasure. It was a state of unconsciousness : he did not know what he was
doing, or how much he was doing, or how the hours and moments were flying,
but only felt that at this time his work was good. "

BIOGRAPHICAL Noil.

Facsimile of a
portion of
Tolstoy's MS.

Tolstoy at work
in his study at
Yasnaya Polyana
see page 13

Tolstoy with bis
bicycle

see page 6

A portrait of
Tolstoy

.<<•<• :

Tolstoy in the
grounds of
Yasnaya Polyana

sec ptige 24

Count Tolstoy
and his family
see page 31

Tol-to\ \\a- al-o :iu cutlm-ia-tic .port-man a diver-ion u hich orroMioned
him two >eriou- accident- :in<l. in addition to fulfilling tin- ilutu- of a JiMice
of tlic Peace, In- set himself to L'rapplc with tin- novel condition- of land-
iiumii-. a OOmpUeated ami aril linn- ta-k to \vliirli In- applied hiriiM-lf with
characteri-tic energy ami shrcwdnc-s. Indeed, hi. intcre.t- were manifold
ami exacting. Yet during thi- hu-y period In- by mi mean- nc^b-rled lii»
literary work. The composition of his novel " War ami I1. IM-C.-UI

immediately after his marriage, ami extended over a in-riud of eight year-
Hi- uife ropieil out the manuscript of this work mi le— than -e\en time-
a- he altered ami improved it. " \\';ir and I'eare " wa* followed by " Anna
Karenina," which was not completed until \H~C>.

In his method of working, Tol-toy may he likened to the old painti-r-
I laving settled upon a plan of work, and collected a large number of
studies, he tirst makes a charcoal -ketch, a- it wen*, and write- rapidly
without thinking of particulars. He then ha- a clean ropy of tin- work made
by hi- wife or one of his daughters, ami tin- is ajfain -ubjected to careful
remodelling. It is still in the nature of a charcoal sketch. The MS. U
speedily covered witli erasures and Interpolation*. \\'holt> MMitenre- replace
others. The work is then copied a^iin, and sonu* cbaptfr- Tol-toy \\ rite»
more than ten times. He usually writes on quarto -hci-t- «if cheap plain
paper in a larjre involved band, and sometimes rovers as many a- twenty
paires iii one day. He regards the interval lietweeii nine o'cbx-k and tbree
as the best time for work.

His study at Yasnaya Polyana is a small room with an unrarpeted floor.
a vaulted ceiling, and thick stone walls. Formerly it was a store-room, and
on the ceiling are heavy black iron ring's, on \\hich bams u-ed to baiuf and
which were used later for ffymn.-sstic exercises. Tlie study is very cool ami
quiet, and contains various implement- of labour, such as a -cythe. a saw,
pincers, files, etc.

After his morning labours, Tolstoy generally iroe- out. often ridinjr on
hor-eback or on his bicycle, according to the state of the weather. He i.
a strict vctretarian. eatiny only the simj>lest foiMl and avoiding all stimulant-.
He loiifr ajfo ceased to -moke. Attaching great importance to manual hiltour.
lie takes a share in the. housework, liirhtinj: his own tire and carrying water.
At one time he learned bootmakingj and it is wonderful what an amount of
physical exertion he was able to undergo at the a>re of seventy in the way
of heavy labour in the field, of riding scores of versN on bis bicycle, or of
playing for hours at lawn tennis.

Tolstoy has always dre--ed extremely simply, and when at home hi-
costume consisted of a irrey flannel blouse, which ill summer he exchanged
for a canvas one of a very original cut, as may be judged from the fact that
there was in the whole district only one old woman who could make it accord-
ing to his orders. In this blouse Tolstoy sit for his portrait to Kramsky and
Hepiii. the painters. His over-dress was composed of a caftan and half-sboulta.
made of the simplest materials, and, like the blouse, eccentric in their cut,
beiiu; made evidently not for show but to stand liad weather. The Hon.
Krnest Howard Crosby has triven an interesting description of Count
Tolstoy'- appearance. " He i- dressed like a pea-ant in a grey-white hlou-e
of thin, coarse, canvas-like material, with a leather In'lt ; but his toilet differs
from a |icasaiit's in being scrupulously clean. His features are irregular and
plain, and yet his figure is so strong and massive that the tout rmtrmMr is
striking and fine-looking. His little blue eyes peer out from under his hii«hy
eyebrows with the kindliest of expressions. >f

Count and Countess Tolstoy have had fifteen children of whom only seven
survived. The system of their upbringing has been fully dealt with by M.
C. A. Hehrs in his •• Recollections of Count Leo Tolstoy. ' Toys and play-
things were rigorously hani-hed from the nursery. \\ itb the fiist child flu-
trial was made to di-pen-e altogether with a nurse. Hut later it was thought

40

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Count Tolstoy,
his wife, and
daughters

see page 12

Tolstoy and his
eldest daughter
Tatyana

see page 30

Leo Tolstoy, from
a portrait
painted in 1884

see page 33

Illustrations by
H. R. Millar to
" What Men Live
By"-

see page 25

—and to "Where
Love is there God
is also "

see page 15

Cover of " Where
Love is there God
is also "

see page 20

Pasternak's
illustrations to
" Resurrection "

see pages 19, 29
and 34

well to yield to the requirements of their social position and to the habits of
contemporary life, and the children were put under the care of nurses, bonnes,
and governesses. The parents, however, exercised a strict and unremittent
surveillance over both the children and those who had the care of them.

The greatest possible liberty was allowed to the children, and all put in
authority over them were strictly forbidden to have resort under any pretext
to violent or severe punishments.

Tolstoy believed that these principles were nowhere so generally accepted
as in England, and, accordingly, from their third to their ninth year, the
children were placed under the charge of young English governesses engaged
directly from' London.

Countess Tolstoy is an excellent housewife, attentive and hospitable. All
the complicated and troublesome management of the housekeeping and
direction of household affairs is under her charge. She is indefatigable, and
brings her brisk energy, thriftiness, and activity to bear in every direction,
and this she does without help. Her three eldest sons live apart, each
occupied with his own business matters. Her daughters have their own
interests and duties, which take up the greater part of their time.

Tolstoy's eldest daughter, Tatyana Lvovna, a girl of exceptional talent, in
particular works very hard. In addition to copying much of her father's
manuscript, she conducts his vast correspondence, consisting of an almost
incredible number of letters received in all languages from every part of the
globe.

This is probably the most striking of all the portraits of Count Tolstoy,
representing him when at the height of his popularity and power. In 1884
he was at work on the Popular Tales and Sketches which sold by millions
throughout Russia, and from which we reproduce two or three illustrations —
viz., one by H. R. Millar from the English edition of " What Men Live By,"
written in 1881 ; another by the same artist from the. English edition of
" Where Loye is there God is also," and a third showing the cover of this
tract, which was written in 1885, and issued in rough pamphlet form at the
price of a few farthings.

During the last twenty years Tolstoy has written the following books : —
" My Confession," " A Criticism of Dogmatic Theology," which has never
been translated, " The Four Gospels, Harmonized and Translated," " What
I Believe," "The Gospel in Brief," "What to Do," "On Life " (also called
"Life"), "The Kreutzer Sonata," "The Kingdom of God is Within You,"
" The Christian Teaching," " What is Art ?" which in Tolstoy's own opinion
is the best constructed of his books, "Resurrection," his last novel, begun
about 1894, and then laid aside in favour of what seemed more important
work to be completely rewritten and published in 1899 for the benefit of the
Doukhabors, and latterly " What is Religion and what is Its Essence," published
in February 1902. The illustrations reproduced from "" Resurrection " on
pages 19, 29, and 94 are from the remarkable drawings by Pasternak. Concern-
ing these pictures there is an interesting note. in the preface of the French
edition of the novel from which it may be gathered that the drawings
tallied very closely with Tolstoy's own conception of the appearance of his
characters. It was the artist's usual custom to submit each design on its
completion to the eminent novelist for his opinion. Invariably Tolstoy
showed his approval of the clever realisation of his ideas. But when it came
to the sketch of Prince Nekhludov, Tolstoy went so far as to enquire of
M. Pasternak whether he was acquainted with the person who had served him
as a model. At this the artist showed extreme surprise — he had not even
been aware that the character was copied from an original.

AUG26 888

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY