Leo Tolstoy: His Life and Work/Chapter 5

by Paul Biryukov

Boyhood

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?'

"I thought of Pimen, and listened to the valet's words. I climbed down from the horse and, when I saw how his sweaty sides hung down, how he breathed heavily through his nostrils, and how he switched his bald tail, I understood that it was hard for the horse. I felt so sorry for Raven that I began to kiss his sweaty neck and to beg his forgiveness for having beaten him."

In the tale, How I was Taught to Ride Horseback, Tolstoy recalls how together with his brothers he went to a riding-school.

"Then they brought a pony. It was a red horse, and his tail was cut off. He was called Ruddy. The master laughed and said to me:

"`Well, young gentleman, get on your horse!'

"I was both happy and afraid, and tried to act in such a manner as not to be noticed by anybody. For a long time I tried to get my foot into the stirrup, but could not do it because I was too small. Then the master raised me up in his hands and put me on the saddle. He said:

"`The young master is not heavy; about two pounds in weight, that is all.'

"At first he held me by my hand, but I saw that my brothers were not held, and so I begged him to let go of me. He said:

"`Are you not afraid?'

"I was very much afraid, but I said that I was not. I was so much afraid because Ruddy kept dropping his ears. I thought he was angry with me. The master said:

"`Look out, don't fall down!' and let go of me. At first Ruddy went at a slow pace, and I sat up straight. But the saddle was smooth, and I was afraid I should slip off. The master asked me:

"`Well, are you fast in the saddle?'

"I said, `Yes, I am.'

"`If so, go at a slow trot!' and the master clicked his tongue.

"Ruddy started at a slow trot, and began to jog me. But I kept silent, and tried not to slip to one side. The master praised me. `Oh, a fine young gentleman, indeed!'

"I was very glad to hear it.

"Just then the master's friend went up to him and began to talk with him, and the master stopped looking at me.

"Suddenly I felt that I had slipped a little to one side on my saddle. I wanted to straighten myself up, but was unable to do so. I wanted to call out to the master to stop the horse, but I thought it would be a disgrace if I did it, and so kept silence. The master was not looking at me, and Ruddy ran at a trot, and I slipped still more to one side. I looked at the master and thought that he would help me, but he was still talking with his friend, and, without looking at me, kept repeating, `Well done, young gentleman!'

"I was now altogether on one side, and was very much frightened. I thought I was lost, but I felt ashamed to cry. Ruddy shook me up once more, and I slipped off entirely and fell to the ground. Then Ruddy stopped, and the master looked at the horse and saw that I was not on him. He said, `I declare, my young gentleman has dropped off!' and walked over to me.

"When I told him that I was not hurt, he laughed and said, `A child's body is soft.'

"I felt like crying. I asked him to put me again on the horse, and I was lifted on. After that I did not fall down any more."

Thus developed this remarkable child, thoughtful, impressionable, shy, affectionate, very lonely owing to the immense power of inner life in him which found no response in his surroundings.

Footnotes

1. An interpolation by Tolstoy when looking through the MS.
2. From Countess S.A. Tolstaya's Reminiscences.
3. From Tolstoy's draft Reminiscences.
4. In Childhood.
5. From a private letter.
6. Interpolation by Tolstoy in the MS. of this work.
7. Boyhood.
8. Boyhood.
9. The material for the description of this friendship I owe to my later friendship with Dyakov, during the last year of my university life at Kazan.
10. Boyhood.
11. S.A. Bers, Reminiscences of Count L.N. Tolstoy.
12. A man ninety years old.