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[Illustration: Leo Tolstoy, 1910]


THE LAST DAYS OF TOLSTOY

by

VLADIMIR TCHERTKOFF

Translated from the Russian by Nathalie A. Duddington







1922
London: William Heinemann

Printed in Great Britain




CONTENTS

                                                                PAGE
Introduction                                                      ix

Public opinion demands that facts with regard to Tolstoy's going
away should be revealed--The conditions of Tolstoy's life were
a test of his consistency--Why is it necessary to publish the
circumstances of his going away?--The importance of Tolstoy's
example--Misrepresentation of the causes of his going away--The
moral duty of his friends to defend his memory--My task.


PART I

WHY TOLSTOY DID NOT LEAVE HIS HOME                                 1

(Letter to H. Dosev)

Dosev's mistake, common to many--Tolstoy's true motives--His
independence of the opinion of men--The limit of his yielding--In
order to go away he had to feel the necessity for doing so--It was
easier to go than to remain--Tolstoy's sufferings at Yasnaya Polyana
(from his intimate diary)--The mistake of passing censure upon his
life at Yasnaya--He fulfilled that which God required of him--His
love for his wife and his confidence in her--His self-sacrifice for
her sake--We must believe in his conscientiousness--The heroism of
his life in his family.


PART II

WHY TOLSTOY WENT AWAY

Chapter I.--The conditions of life at Yasnaya Polyana             18

Wealthy surroundings--False position in the eyes of men--Spiritual
break with his wife.

Chapter II.--Change for the worse in his wife's attitude to him   26

Change for the worse in the conditions of life at Yasnaya with
regard to the management of the estate, to the relations with the
peasants, and in his wife's attitude to him--Tolstoy gives up
landed property--His readiness to go away and the causes of his
delay in making a final decision.

Chapter III.--The history of the will                             32

Tolstoy's attitude to property in general and to literary property
in particular--His differences with his wife on that score--Tolstoy's
firmness in renouncing the copyright of his works--His wife's
opposition--Short history of the drawing up of the will.

Chapter IV.--Intervals of rest--in other people's houses           48

Mental and physical revival--Creative work.

Chapter V.--The last period                                       52

Summer of 1910--Period of suffering that undermined his health.

Chapter VI.--Mental agony                                         58

Tolstoy's disappointment at the impossibility of awakening his wife's
spiritual consciousness--Recognition that his further stay at Yasnaya
Polyana is unnecessary--The harm that his staying there did to Sofya
Andreyevna.

Chapter VII.--The night of Tolstoy's going away                   63

The last touch--Preparations and departure--Entries in the diary.

Chapter VIII.--Tolstoy's relation to his wife                     67

Letters to her in 1897 and after his departure--Reasons why he did
not wish to see her.

Chapter IX.--The motives that decided his going away              78

The last straw--Mistaken judgments about Tolstoy's going away.

Chapter X.--The significance of Tolstoy's going away and of the
whole spiritual achievement of his life                           86

The one desire of his life, to do the will of God--The inevitability
of the end.


PART III

TOLSTOY'S ATTITUDE TO HIS SUFFERINGS                              94

The growth of his inner consciousness during the second period of his
life. Extracts from the diary for 1884--Differences with his wife--On
the border of despair--Feeling of solitude--Memory of his mother and
his longing for her (1906)--Striving after God. Extracts from diary
and letters from 1889-1910--Family trials--The cross of his life, till
the end--His words about Sofya Andreyevna and consciousness of his
guilt (from a conversation with, and the letters to Tchertkoff)--The
mystery of another's soul--Tolstoy's thoughts that give a general
meaning to his interpretation of suffering ("The Reading-Cycle,"
"The Way of Life").

Appendix I                                                       139

The inevitable one-sidedness of quotations made from Tolstoy's
writings for the purposes of the present narrative--His many-sided
personality--His power of controlling his sufferings and his natural
joy of life--The attainment of the true good.

Appendix II                                                      143

My personal attitude to Tolstoy's wife--The experience and
observation of thirty years--My task is not to censure anyone
but to vindicate truth.




INTRODUCTION


So much misunderstanding, misrepresentation, partiality and personal
prejudice has accumulated in connection with the last years and days
of Leo Nikolaevitch Tolstoy's life, that before starting upon this
first detailed account of his "going away" I find myself compelled,
at the risk of wearying the reader's patience, to begin with a
somewhat lengthy introduction.

Now that Tolstoy's wife[1] is dead, the chief obstacle to revealing
the true causes of his going away from Yasnaya Polyana is removed.
Like other friends of Leo Nikolaevitch, I have said nothing for ten
years. During this time many people, some of them particularly
deserving of confidence and respect, have asked me to publish all
that I know about this event. As an instance I will quote a letter
from Mrs. Mayo, a well-known English authoress and admirer of
Tolstoy.[2]

  "_Old Aberdeen,
      Scotland,
       Jan. 17, 1914._

"Dear Mr. Tchertkoff,

"Some of us in Great Britain feel that the time has come when it is
highly desirable that we should hear the story of the tragedy which
beset the last years of Leo Tolstoy's life, from one who was in its
scene.

"We can understand and respect your reticence up to this point. But
now so many rumours, derogatory to Tolstoy, and therefore likely to
diminish the weight of his teaching, are spreading over the world,
and seem to be the subject of a very active propaganda even in this
country.

"Hitherto, however, we have heard little or nothing save from those
who were notoriously out of sympathy with his principles, and who did
not scruple to put obstacles in the way of the carrying out of his
last will.

"Further, it has been unfortunate that the _Life of Tolstoy_ best
known in Britain is the work of one who, far from being a disciple,
is not even a neutral or impartial recorder, but is in flat
antagonism to Tolstoy's leading principle of non-resistance to evil
by violence.

"Therefore we appeal to you, Tolstoy's personal friend and
fellow-worker, that you should let us hear the facts of the case as
you saw them.

"Some of us feel that Tolstoy's own works explain enough. I remember
when I read the last page of the paper 'Living and Dying,' in his
_Three Days in the Village_, written only a few months before his
death, I realised that Tolstoy's spiritual anguish was being strained
almost beyond endurance.

"Again, I repeat that we all deeply respect the reticence you have
hitherto maintained. But there is a time to speak and a time to keep
silent. History shows us again and again how impossible it is to
unearth the truth when eye-witnesses are gone. Thus are engendered
the most misleading and mischievous myths.

"I trust that you will give this matter your deepest consideration,
and I remain,

  "Yours with much regard,
    (Mrs.) "Isabella Fyvie Mayo."

I have received many such requests, both spoken and written, from
many different people, some of whom were noted for their tact and
reserve, and whose opinion therefore carried special weight in this
delicate matter. Nevertheless I could not make up my mind.

I feel that the time has come at last to speak openly of what I know.
I approach my task with no light heart, but with a full consciousness
of the moral responsibility which it involves. In doing so I have but
one wish: to say nothing that is superfluous or out of date, and to
keep back nothing which I feel it my duty to Leo Nikolaevitch and to
other people to reveal.

In Leo Nikolaevitch Tolstoy's life two circumstances deserve special
notice. In the first place, the immediate external conditions in
which he was placed--that is, all he had to endure in his family life
and home surroundings--seemed to be specially designed as a severe
trial for him. If someone wanted to put to a practical test Leo
Nikolaevitch's sincerity, consistency and spiritual strength in
carrying out his conception of life, he could not have placed him
in conditions more suited for the purpose than those in which
Leo Nikolaevitch lived for the last thirty years of his life.
Secondly, it is remarkable that Leo Nikolaevitch bore this trial
irreproachably, though it was more severe than anyone unacquainted
with his intimate life could suppose.

There was a time when all educated Russians imagined, in their
spiritual blindness, that Tolstoy's "easy" life in Yasnaya Polyana
was a fresh example of the inconsistency with which great thinkers
fail to apply to themselves the lofty truths they preach. Tolstoy's
enemies rejoiced, and regarded his supposed inconsistency as a proof
of his theory being inapplicable in practice. His friends found
extenuating circumstances for his guilt, and thought that we should
be grateful to Tolstoy for the spiritual food he had given us, and
not be too hard upon his human weaknesses. And yet during all this
time, with a firmness which nothing could shake, and sometimes at the
cost of incredible suffering, Leo Nikolaevitch was carrying on the
most heroic work of self-abnegation, consistency and self-restraint
of which man is capable. He realised in his actions and in all his
personal life that which he preached, and both in his life and his
death he exemplified the complete renunciation of all personal
desires and the whole-hearted service of God, in which he believed
the purpose and the meaning of human life to consist.

I am well aware that this assertion may appear to be an exaggeration.
Some readers will be inclined to ascribe my words to the natural
enthusiasm of a "Tolstoyan" for his "teacher." Fortunately, however,
I have at my disposal a wealth of documentary material which
irrefutably confirms the truth of my words. I hope, in due time, to
publish this material as well as my own observations and facts known
to me with regard to Leo Nikolaevitch's family life as a whole.

Written documents which I have in my keeping sufficiently reveal the
general character of the conditions in which Leo Nikolaevitch had to
live. But if there were only these data to go upon, one would have to
resign oneself to inevitable blanks and omissions. The readers would
have to treat these documents like learned investigators treat
their historical material--that is, to fill up the blanks with
their own surmises, to connect the disconnected, and to reconcile
contradictions in accordance with their personal predilections and
the degree of their inventiveness. Among the extensive material
relating to Tolstoy's life there already exist, and will no doubt
appear in the future, communications which more or less misrepresent
the facts and even contain downright falsehoods. To the malicious joy
of Tolstoy's enemies there has already accumulated a whole
literature which depicts his personality, his life, his "going away"
and his death in a totally perverted manner, and is full of shameless
slander.

Under such circumstances, the future biographers of Tolstoy would
have--as is usually the case--to steer a middle course between all
the contradictory data in their possession. In doing so they will
not be able to avoid the misleading influence of the unreliable
documents--and this, indeed, is already noticeable in some of the
recent biographies. In view of this, it is particularly important
that some contemporary of Tolstoy who was particularly intimate with
him, enjoyed his full confidence and had a first-hand knowledge of
the true conditions of his home life, should leave a consecutive
exposition of all the relevant and well-authenticated facts. It is
desirable, too, that this person should not be one of Tolstoy's
relatives, and would therefore be free from all family prejudices and
predilections.

Not in virtue of any personal merits, but only owing to certain
external circumstances, I satisfy these conditions, and cannot help
feeling that fate itself lays upon me the moral duty of undertaking
such a work.

A detailed account is necessary not only for the sake of "historical
accuracy" in the biography of the great man; it is needed in the
interests of humanity in order to preserve in all its intact
wholeness the striking example of Tolstoy's life; for this life
incontestably proves the possibility of carrying out in practice the
lofty truths to which he gave verbal expression.

It would be a mistake to agree with only such truths as are
proclaimed by men who perfectly realise in the practice of their own
lives that which they preach. It is part of our nature that a man may
be clearly conscious of truths so lofty that it is beyond his power
to put them into practice. They may be practised by his
contemporaries who have more strength than he has, or by future
generations who will have attained a higher degree of moral
perfection. But it is also part of our nature that the example of a
man who realises in his own conduct, in spite of any privations and
suffering, and even at the cost of his life, that which he preaches,
always arouses the enthusiastic sympathy of others, and becomes a
powerful help and encouragement to many who strive to follow the
ideals proclaimed by such a man.

Even if in his personal life Tolstoy were inconsistent and failed to
live up to his own convictions, he would still deserve our profound
gratitude for the enormous, immeasurable impetus which, by his
intellectual work, he has given to the development of human
consciousness. But it has pleased destiny to create in the person of
Tolstoy not only a thinker of genius, but also a man of great moral
heroism. It is therefore very important to preserve the most exact
information about his personal life, especially about that side of it
which called for most self-sacrifice on his part and made him suffer
most in carrying out his principles in practice. Finally, I was led
to undertake the present work by my personal relation to Leo
Nikolaevitch. Our intimate friendship of many years' standing, my
ardent devotion and love for him in his lifetime, and now my devotion
to his memory, infinitely dear to me, my respect and reverence for
the Divine Principle which expressed itself in him with such power
and purity--all make me eager to do my utmost to preserve for men
in all its striking, untarnished brilliance the truth about the
greatness of his moral achievement. Since there are people to whom
this truth is unpleasant or damaging, and who seek to pervert or
conceal it in every way, making wild inventions about Leo
Nikolaevitch, or demanding that truth shall not be revealed, surely
it behoves his most intimate friends to champion his memory and
preserve his noble image from pollution or distortion.

Now that Leo Nikolaevitch's widow, for whose sake we have refrained
from publishing the facts, is no longer alive, it is not only
permissible for us, his friends, to come forward in his defence but,
in view of all that has happened, it is our bounden duty to tell the
truth about his life and death, so as to counteract all the slanders
that have been set going by his enemies.[3]

I have also heard another argument from persons who would have
preferred, for the sake of their vanity, that Tolstoy's family
tragedy should have remained secret. They said that Leo Nikolaevitch
himself never defended himself against those who slandered him. He
preferred to bear the censure of public opinion rather than reveal
the painful conditions of his life and allow others to be blamed
instead of himself. And therefore, they say, after his death his
friends ought to follow his example.

It is impossible to agree with this. One may well understand that Leo
Nikolaevitch concealed his sufferings. He drew strength and derived
satisfaction from the consciousness that he was living not before
men, but before God. Far from standing in need of human approbation,
he thought that unjust condemnation on the part of men was good for
him in so far as it forcibly drove him to that road upon which one
has nothing but the voice of God in one's own soul for guidance. But
does this mean that we too must say nothing about Tolstoy's heroic
life and conceal his moral rectitude now, when he is not among us?

We have not, cannot have, and ought not to have, the same motives
which in this respect influenced him. It is good for me, for my soul,
to be unjustly condemned owing to the fact that I do not want to
justify myself and am sparing the real culprit. But there is nothing
good in my being silent when another person is unjustly condemned or
slandered in my presence, while I have the means of proving his
innocence. Leo Nikolaevitch had grounds for not justifying himself
before men; but we have no grounds whatever for concealing that which
does justify him. In the present case we ought to be guided, not by
the thought of ourselves in his place if he were alive, but by the
immediate voice of our own heart and reason, which demands that we
should defend the friend whose memory is being reviled before our
eyes.

These are the reasons that have led me to undertake the biographical
work of which the present narrative of Tolstoy's going away forms, so
to speak, only one separate chapter.

All the events of cosmic life are so inextricably interwoven that,
were it possible to change in the past some one of them, even the
apparently most insignificant, it would be necessary to change at
the same time absolutely all the other concurrent and preceding
circumstances. Therefore in order to investigate fully the conditions
which have occasioned this or that event in a person's life, one
would have to consider the whole past history of mankind, both the
external and the internal or spiritual. And since it is impossible
even in thought to embrace all this infinite number of facts, it
must be admitted that it is utterly beyond our power to determine all
the causes that have produced this or that event in the life of a
particular individual.

Thus in the story of Tolstoy's "going away" which occupies us now, no
investigation, however careful, can exhaust all the outer and inner
circumstances, receding into an endless past, that have brought about
the event in question. Besides, even in the domain of Tolstoy's
personal life which admits of inquiry, the direct and indirect causes
of his "going away" are so numerous and many-sided that it is beyond
the power of a single individual to make an exhaustive enumeration of
them. The colouring given in such cases to the circumstances under
investigation and the very drift of the inquiry depend so largely
upon the personal point of view and the mood of the writer, that, try
as he may to be impartial, his selection and treatment of causes will
inevitably be more or less one-sided. Therefore in order to bring to
light the causes of Tolstoy's "going away," it is extremely important
that the greatest possible number of his contemporaries should record
and preserve for future generations the facts known to them as well
as their thoughts and reminiscences; and it is desirable, too, that
this should be done particularly by those of them who had occasion to
stand nearest to Tolstoy's personal and family life. A true history
of Tolstoy's life must be preserved in the greatest possible fullness
for future generations. His contemporaries, and in the first place
his relatives, personal friends and co-workers, ought not to neglect
this important task laid upon them by fate itself.

So far as I am concerned, I quite realise that the small beginning
which I venture to make with the present narrative is only a drop in
the sea of all the facts, observations and deductions which it would
be desirable to gather together before Tolstoy's contemporaries leave
the scene of this earthly life.[4]

In composing the present book I have tried to distinguish as sharply
as possible between: (1) facts and circumstances which I knew for
certain, and therefore have stated them without any reservations; (2)
facts and circumstances of the certainty of which I personally am
convinced, though I do not consider myself entitled to affirm them
unconditionally, and state them with some reservations; (3)
circumstances surmised by me on the ground of certain data which I
quote herewith; and (4) my personal opinions, considerations and
reflections upon the facts quoted.

Being compelled in the present narrative to be as brief as possible,
I am unable to substantiate all my assertions by documentary and
other evidence in my possession. I am therefore addressing myself
here only to such readers who can take my word for it that I give out
as facts only that which is known to me for certain, and do not
permit myself any embellishments or exaggeration. But in the other,
still unwritten, book to which I have referred, _Tolstoy's Moral
Achievement_, the subject of his family life as a whole will be
extensively treated and I shall quote my data in full.

If I often permit myself to include in the narrative my personal
valuation of the events, this is certainly not because I want to
force my own opinions on the reader instead of barely stating the
facts and letting him draw his own conclusions. I quite recognise the
advantages of a so-called objective narrative, but it was not what in
the present case I had in view. As I have mentioned already, my
purpose in writing this book was to contradict the slanders against
Leo Nikolaevitch and the misinterpretations of his conduct. I do not
doubt that the majority of my readers will consider my selection of
facts and my interpretation of them one-sided. Let, then, other
investigators of the same subject interpret the facts each from his
own point of view. The more such narratives are published, the less
risk there will be of the reader receiving a one-sided impression,
and the more free he will be to draw his own conclusions.

As to a detailed objective exposition of all the circumstances
connected with Tolstoy's "going away," I believe that, desirable as
it is, the time for it has not yet come, for the persons who possess
most information on the subject have not yet had time to publish the
numerous and varied details known to them. Let us hope that they will
not put off this task for so long that they will be dead before they
have fulfilled it. And if my present contribution will induce them
also to give out something of what they know, even if it were solely
with the object of contradicting me, I should be very glad of it, as
indeed of any corrections of my work that anyone might wish to make.
It is far better that the matter should be thoroughly thrashed out
between the eye-witnesses rather than--as often happens with the
lives of distinguished men--it should become, in future ages, the
subject of an extensive polemic literature which seldom succeeds in
getting at truth. It seems to me that only when there appear the
greatest possible number of additional communications on the same
subject shall we be able to work out, from all the accumulated
material, that really objective and trustworthy account of Tolstoy's
"going away" which is so necessary in order to give men a true idea
of the spiritual achievement of his life.

  V. Tchertkoff.

  _Moscow, Lefortovsky pereulok, 7.
     January 1922._


FOOTNOTES

[1] Sofya Andreyevna Tolstoy, who died in November, 1919. In
Appendix II, at the end of the present volume, I explain what
attitude towards Sofya Andreyevna I adopt in the present narrative.

[2] Isabella Fyvie Mayo.

[3] In this connection I venture to quote here a small extract
from my article entitled "Should the truth about Tolstoy's going
away be told?" (published in the magazine _Tolstoy's Voice and
Unity_, N 3 (15)).

"The conditions under which Leo Nikolaevitch Tolstoy left Yasnaya
Polyana and died on the journey at a railway station were, as
everyone knows, quite exceptional. And yet, though it happened ten
years ago, mankind does not to this day know the true causes of this
event. Both in Russia and abroad the actual reasons that drove a man
like Leo Tolstoy to leave his family are unknown, and so everyone
invented his own reasons and published all sorts of fictions. Some
have maintained that Tolstoy longed to be received once more into the
Orthodox Church and wanted to save his soul in a monastery. Some
insisted that as he grew old his intellect grew so weak that he did
not know what he was doing, and, instinctively feeling the approach
of death, went off without any definite purpose. Others observed with
satisfaction that at the end of his life, at any rate, Tolstoy
succeeded in overcoming his attachment to his family and his bondage
to wealthy surroundings, and in doing what in accordance with his
convictions he ought to have done long ago. Others, on the contrary,
regretted that he had not the strength to endure the trials of his
home life to the end, and that, revolted at the behaviour of his
family, he lost his spiritual balance and failed in his duty to his
relatives. There is no enumerating all the guesses and suppositions
that were spread by people who attempted during the last ten years to
solve the riddle of Tolstoy's 'going away,' or who intentionally
perverted the truth. Quite recently in his book on Tolstoy (which has
already been translated into foreign languages), Maxim Gorky, with
his usual amazing rashness in dealing with subjects which he does not
know or fails to understand, thought it fit, by the side of other
absurdities about Tolstoy, to inform the world that Leo Nikolaevitch
left Yasnaya Polyana 'with the despotic intention of increasing the
oppressive influence of his religious ideas' and 'compelling people
to accept them,' and that he, Maxim Gorky, does not approve of such
behaviour.

"I owe it to my friend's memory to show how ill-grounded are the
accusations and the slanders with which men, misinformed as to the
circumstances of his life, or opposed to his theories, tried to
besmirch his name. I naturally want to do my utmost to reinstate in
all its beauty and purity the spiritual image of him to whom I am
indebted so much for his love and moral assistance."

[4] In connection with the Tolstoy Museum in Moscow
(Pretchistenka 11) a circle has been formed with the object, partly,
of collecting and preserving such communications. Some of them may,
with the author's consent, be published in the _Viestnik_.




PART I

WHY TOLSTOY DID NOT LEAVE HIS HOME

(_From a letter to H. Dosev, October 19, 1910_[5])


Dear Dosev,

I feel that I must protest against what you say in your last letter
in connection with Leo Nikolaevitch.

Among other things you say of him: "Nothing is worse than slavery.
And worse still is slavery to a spoilt child who has been spoilt by
oneself. But I know nothing worse in the world than being enslaved to
an irrational, self-willed woman who is convinced that her slave
husband will do whatever she chooses. Is not Sofya Andreyevna such
a woman, and is not Leo Nikolaevitch in slavery to her? His
submissiveness to Sofya Andreyevna I regard not as a virtue but as a
weakness. He makes concessions to her through fear of sinning against
love; but in doing this is he not sinning against the great love?
You know she keeps him away from his friends, from the peasants,
from humanity; she makes him live the revolting life of a wealthy
landowner. I do not reproach Leo Nikolaevitch, I do not condemn
him--I love and respect him too much. But I am sorry for him. I am
sorry for his whole life, and for his great teaching, which has not
passed in vain for himself and for those near him, but which will
pass in vain for the peasants and for humanity; for his external life
blurs all the significance and meaning of his words and thoughts in
men's eyes."

You conclude with the words: "Do not be hurt by my words. I
repeat--this is the expression not of censure, but of the pain of a
man who loves him. And so if there is something I don't see rightly,
you and all the others and Leo Nikolaevitch must forgive me. The
greatest joy of my life is my love for him and for all of you,
friends of the spirit."

Just because I believe in the sincerity of your love for Leo
Nikolaevitch, and know that he too loves you, just because of that I
feel irresistibly impelled to answer those words of yours, dear
friend. You really do not "see rightly," and are mistaken in assuming
slavishness and inconsistency in Leo Nikolaevitch. On the contrary,
he displays in his attitude to Sofya Andreyevna the greatest
freedom--freedom from anxiety about the opinion of men, and the
highest consistency--the determination to do, according to the
measure of his powers and understanding, not his own will but the
will of God. And for the sake of doing this will of God he is ready
to endure any personal sufferings of his own and any human censure
and disgrace.

You are mistaken in supposing that Leo Nikolaevitch does whatever
Sofya Andreyevna wishes. On the contrary, there is a limit beyond
which he does not give way to her. He does not give way to her when
she demands from him what is distinctly against his conscience. And
it is just because he does not give way entirely, but adheres to this
limit in his concessions--it is just through that, that he has so
much to put up with from Sofya Andreyevna.

During the last ten years of his life Leo Nikolaevitch has often
thought of leaving his wife, and has more than once been on the verge
of taking that step. It is still perfectly possible that he will take
it in the end if he becomes convinced that his remaining with his
wife is not attaining his object, but merely exciting her, and
encouraging her in her exactingness and tyranny. But to do this he
must clearly and unmistakably recognise in his conscience that he
_ought_ to leave her. That he has not hitherto left her is not at all
because it is more agreeable or more convenient to live in her house,
it is not at all through weakness of character or dread of disobeying
her; but, believe me, solely because he is not yet sufficiently
convinced that he _ought_ to go away, and does not feel that it is
God's will that he should go. For him personally it would be so much
more agreeable, peaceful and in every way convenient to go away, that
he is afraid of acting selfishly, of doing what is easier for
himself, and of refusing through cowardice to bear the trials laid
upon him.

If he did leave Yasnaya Polyana at his advanced age, and with his
infirmities, he could not now live by manual labour. Nor could he go
staff in hand about the world and fall ill and die somewhere by the
high-road, or as a passing pilgrim in a peasant's hut. He could not
do it simply from affection for those who love him, for his daughters
and the friends who are near him in heart and spirit--however
attractive such an end might be for him himself, and however
theatrically splendid it might seem to the crowd which at present
censures him. He could not without being cruel refuse to settle in
some modest abode where, without the help of servants, they could do
his housework for him, surrounding him with the affection and care
necessary at his age, giving him the opportunity of associating
without hindrance with the working people whom he loves so much, and
from whom he is at present completely cut off. Why, such a free,
quiet life would be a real paradise for him in comparison with the
prison in which he has to live now!

It will be asked why he does not accept for himself these happy
surroundings so easily within his reach, seeing that his wife has,
one would have thought, given him long ago sufficient ground for
leaving her house. Why does he not now, at least, in the decline of
his age, cast off the heavy burden which in the person of Sofya
Andreyevna he has been bearing on his shoulders for thirty years,
sometimes almost sinking under its weight? It is obvious that if he
does not do this it is not from weakness or cowardice, and it is not
from selfishness; but, on the contrary, from a feeling of duty, from
a manly determination to remain at his post to the very end,
sacrificing his preferences and his personal happiness for the sake
of doing what he considers to be the divine will.

In July, 1908, Leo Nikolaevitch passed through one of those agonising
spiritual crises, provoked by Sofya Andreyevna, which with him
nearly always ended in serious illness. So it was on this occasion.
Immediately after it he fell ill, and for some time after it was
almost at death's door. I quote a few extracts from his diary in the
days just before his illness.

"_July 2, 1908._--If I had heard of myself as an outsider--of a man
living in luxury, wringing all he can out of the peasants, locking
them up in prison, while preaching and professing Christianity and
giving away coppers, and for all his loathsome actions sheltering
himself behind his dear wife, I should not hesitate to call him a
blackguard! And that is just what I need that I may be set free from
the praises of men and live for my soul....

"_July 2, 1908._--Doubts have come into my mind whether I do right to
be silent, and even whether it would not be better for me to go away,
to disappear. I refrain from doing this principally because it would
be for _my own sake_, in order to escape from a life poisoned on
every side. I believe that the endurance of this life is needful for
me....

"_July 3, 1908._--It is still as agonising, life here in Yasnaya
Polyana is completely poisoned. Wherever I turn, it is shame and
suffering....

"_July 6, 1908._--Help me, O Lord! Again I long to go away, and I do
not make up my mind to; but do not give up the idea. The great point
is: whether I would be doing it for my own sake if I went away. That
I am not doing it for my own sake in staying I know....

"_July 9, 1908._--One thing grows more and more agonising; the
injustice of the senseless luxury in the midst of which I am living
with undeserved poverty and want all around. I feel worse and worse,
more and more wretched. I cannot forget, I cannot help seeing...."

I remember on one of these days Leo Nikolaevitch returning from a
solitary walk in the woods with that expression of joyful
inspiration which so often illumined his face of late years, and
meeting me with the words:

"I have been thinking a great deal and very deeply. And it has become
so clear to me that when one stands at the parting of the ways and
does not know how to act, one ought always to give the preference to
the decision which involves more self-sacrifice."

From all this it is evident how deeply Leo Nikolaevitch feels his
position, how passionately he longs at times to throw off his yoke
and at the same time with what sincerity and self-sacrifice he is
seeking not his own comfort, but only one thing--the clear
understanding of how he ought to act before his conscience, before
his God, to whose service he had devoted his life not in word alone
but in deed also.

After this how short-sighted, how unjust and cruel seem
utterances--especially on the lips of a loved and loving friend of
Leo Nikolaevitch's, as you are--such as that you look upon his
submission to Sofya Andreyevna not as a virtue but as a weakness.
We may suppose that in Leo Nikolaevitch's place we should act
differently, though it would be difficult for us to say whether in
so acting we should be doing better or worse than he. We cannot
understand all that is passing in his soul, and so we may be
perplexed by some of his actions. But I at least cannot help feeling
the greatest respect for the pure, self-sacrificing impulses by which
he is guided. I cannot help feeling complete confidence in him on
this question, for if anyone, sacrificing all his personal needs and
pleasures, and regardless of his suffering and privations, whatever
they may be, tries unswervingly to follow the dictates of his
conscience, he is doing all that can be expected of a human being,
and no one has the right to condemn, nor need anyone be anxious
about him. You see, for us, looking on Leo Nikolaevitch's life from
outside, it appears in reality as an external phenomenon which we can
consider according to our mood. In our moments of leisure we venture
to criticise Leo Nikolaevitch and his manner of life and to decide
on its value, as though it were far easier for us to grasp and
understand it, than it is for him. "Another man's trouble I can
handle easily, but my own is beyond my comprehension." We forget that
for us it is only a subject of criticism about which we may have
one opinion or another--a question concerning which we may on
occasion argue and bring forward the _pros_ and _cons_. But for
Leo Nikolaevitch it is a question of _conscience_, it is the very
business of his life, it is that into which he is putting all his
soul, all his understanding. What grounds have we for imagining that
we outsiders, who know ourselves to be greatly inferior to Leo
Nikolaevitch spiritually, are capable of understanding his life
better and deciding more conscientiously for him how he ought to act
than he can himself, though he is seeking guidance for his conduct
day and night before God?

Let his enemies vent their malice over his seemingly humiliating
position; let narrow-minded and short-sighted "Tolstoyans," who have
neither spiritual penetration nor the delicate intuition of the
heart, condemn him or bestow their patronising pity on him; but we,
his real friends, who are of one spirit with him, who understand by
what he is living, and are struggling towards the same goal as he,
we, dear Dosev, ought to have more faith and trust in him.

As you are aware, none of Leo Nikolaevitch's friends suffers more
from Leo Nikolaevitch's relations with Sofya Andreyevna than my wife
and I, for they deprive us of one of the greatest joys of our
life--of personal intercourse with him, the enjoyment of which was
the principal reason for our settling in this district.[6] But when I
am in a good frame of mind, all this which is painful and humiliating
vanishes before my trust in Leo Nikolaevitch, and my conviction,
which nothing will shake, that he desires nothing for himself, but is
striving for one thing only--that is, that at every given moment he
may be doing what God requires of him.

Some members of his household who are devoted to Leo Nikolaevitch
are distressed that he should give in to the farce--to them
obvious--which Sofya Andreyevna so often plays before him in order to
attain her objects, at one time agitating him by feigned attacks of
despair and frenzy, at other times touching his heart by displays of
penitence, meekness and care for his welfare which are even more
insincere, or, if at times half sincere, are at least extremely
transitory. But it seems to me that if, through the wonderful purity
of his own heart, Leo Nikolaevitch is incapable of seeing Sofya
Andreyevna as she really is, and with touching trustfulness seizes
upon every justification for recognising in her the smallest signs of
an awakening conscience, then, though he may be mistaken in it, the
tender emotion and joy which he feels on such occasions are perfectly
legitimate, because they arise from his great love and readiness to
forgive everything. It is doubtful whether her success in pretending
is good for Sofya Andreyevna herself. But who knows, perhaps this
wonderful faith in her soul on the part of Leo Nikolaevitch, which
nothing can shake, his continual expectation, his premature,
eager anticipation of the spiritual awakening in her which he so
whole-heartedly desires, will in due time have its effect upon Sofya
Andreyevna. Perhaps such an attitude to her on the part of the man
whom she has so mercilessly tortured for so many years, and who
nevertheless is of all people the only one who has sincerely loved
her, and loved her to the end, will one day be reflected in her soul.
The memory of this in its due time, for instance, when she will
become conscious of the nearness of her own death, when all worldly
plans, aims and desires inevitably retreat into the background, is
the one thing that may be capable of awakening in that unhappy woman
the divine spark, the possibility of which we have no right to deny
in any human being. And if this is possible, is it surprising that
Leo Nikolaevitch, entirely given up to the service of the divine love
as he is, should untiringly attempt to melt with his love the heart
of the partner of his life whom he once drew to himself, with whom he
shared his past sinful life, and with whom he would also wish to save
his soul?

And indeed as a rule, dear Dosev, I am deeply convinced that no one
of us can decide for another, nor determine in regard to another
man's behaviour what is his weakness and what is his virtue. "Before
his God," as it is written in the gospel, "every one of us shall
stand or fall." It is not for us human beings to meddle in the secret
region of another man's soul with our short-sighted criticisms, our
frivolous verdicts and our mistaken condolences.

And however Leo Nikolaevitch may act in the future--whether he
remains to the end beside his wife, or whether at some time he finds
it necessary for her benefit to go away from her--I am convinced of
one thing: that in that matter he will really act only as his
conscience bids him, and therefore he will act rightly.

Why, if Leo Nikolaevitch's wife were drowning and, plunging into the
water to save her, he perished himself, nobody would reproach him for
having sacrificed his friends and humanity for the sake of excessive
family attachments. It is even more impossible to reproach him for
devoting his life, sacrificing its joys and repose, and perhaps even
giving it up altogether, for the sake of saving his wife from the
ruin of her soul.

It ought not to be forgotten also that at the same time Leo
Nikolaevitch always contrives in the most attentive and sensitive way
to respond to every real need, spiritual or material, of the whole
people and of all mankind, devoting his whole working time to intense
spiritual labour in the interests of the working masses, and of all
suffering mankind, whether the suffering be from external or internal
evil.

As for your idea that for the simple people and for humanity "all his
life and great teaching will pass in vain, because his external life
blurs all the significance and meaning of his words and thoughts in
men's eyes," on this too, I assure you, you are profoundly mistaken.

His words cannot pass in vain for humanity if only from the fact that
they do not express something of "his own" with which only those who
"follow him" can agree, but express the best that there is in the
heart of every man. And from that very fact what Tolstoy says in his
writings finds, apart from any relation to his own personal life, a
direct and loving response in the heart and consciousness of all men
whose conscience has not been blunted. And as time passes this
response will only become clearer and more distinct.

When the true conditions of the domestic life of Leo Nikolaevitch
become generally known, the great heroism of his family life,
reproducing in deed what he expressed in words, will be added to the
direct persuasive force of his words in the eyes of humanity.

"Going to the people," to prison, torture, the cross, the stake, the
scaffold--all these have been already. And however deserving of the
deepest respect are the men who face these for conscience' sake, yet
if it is a question of a living example, we, people of the present
day, needed an example of yet another kind.

Men go willingly to the scaffold even from a desire to blow their
neighbour into the air. Men become cripples for life or are killed
for the sake of beating a record with a motor-car or an aeroplane.
All this is striking and sensational, but already no one is surprised
by it. But it is quite a different matter to spend several decades
with such a wife as Sofya Andreyevna without running away from her,
and still preserving in his heart pity and love for her, and this to
the accompaniment of the unceasing mockery of his enemies and
misunderstanding and censure from the majority of his friends--so
to live from day to day, from year to year, not seeing and not
foreseeing any escape but his own death; to endure, in doing so, all
that Leo Nikolaevitch has to endure, being periodically made ill by
it and almost dying, and not only to have not the smallest blame or
bitterness in his heart, but, on the contrary, to be always blaming
himself for lack of patience and love--this really is the highest
consistency on the part of Leo Nikolaevitch. This is a testimony of
the truthfulness of his theory of life than which nothing stronger
and more striking could be imagined. This is just the example that
humanity is in need of in our day, and this example Leo Nikolaevitch
is giving us in his life.

When one looks at the matter from this point of view it becomes so
clear as to be obvious why Leo Nikolaevitch had to have just such a
wife as was vouchsafed to him. "For a great ship a great journey." He
who delivered the message of love in its absolutely unlimited sense
needed to have the possibility in his life of proving in action that
a love that nothing in the world could destroy was really attainable
for man. And in due time, when the truth about Leo Nikolaevitch's
life becomes common property, men will be infinitely grateful to him
for this joyous confirmation of the possibility of following in
practice the godly theory of life of which Tolstoy is the exponent in
his writings.


FOOTNOTES

[5] Ten days before Leo Nikolaevitch went away from Yasnaya
Polyana this letter was written by me to Christo Dosev, the common
friend of Tolstoy and myself, who migrated to Russia from Bulgaria
and died in the year 1919. I quote my letter word for word to
preserve its direct character. I ought to mention that a few years
after Tolstoy's death Dosev told me that he recognised how mistaken
was the censure of Tolstoy to which he had given expression in the
letter which called forth this answer from me.

[6] This letter was written at the time when, though living
only a few versts from Yasnaya Polyana, I was forcibly separated from
Leo Nikolaevitch. This separation, which lasted for about three
months, was due to the hostile attitude towards me of his wife, whose
excited condition he hoped to soothe by the promise not to see me.




PART II

WHY TOLSTOY WENT AWAY




CHAPTER I

LIFE AT YASNAYA POLYANA


A few days after the foregoing letter was written Leo Nikolaevitch
left Yasnaya Polyana.

At first sight it may seem that if he did well in remaining so long
with his wife, he ought not to have abandoned her in the end; or, on
the contrary, if he was right in going away, it was a mistake not to
have done so sooner.

That is how many do reason. Some--the majority--commend him for his
departure, considering that thereby he "atoned" for his supposed
weakness and inconsistency in the past. Others--a small
minority--commend him, on the contrary, for remaining so many years
with his wife, but consider his going away a proof of his
inconsistency.[7]

It seems to me that in any case Leo Nikolaevitch's friends who were
able to estimate at its true value the self-sacrifice with which he
remained a voluntary prisoner in his wife's house for so many years
ought, more than anyone, to have that confidence in him of which he
was worthy. They might at least be confident that if, after all this,
he did decide to go away, he must have had good grounds for doing so;
especially since such an explanation is far more natural and credible
than the supposition that Leo Nikolaevitch, who had so successfully
endured this prolonged ordeal and had displayed such striking
stoicism and self-sacrifice, on the eve of his death suddenly, for
some reason, broke down and was false to his conscience.

In regard to the question of whether he was to remain with his wife
or go away, Leo Nikolaevitch was guided not by any one impulse, but
by many, and often contradictory, impulses.

On the side of not leaving his wife he had various considerations
which are touched on in my letter to Dosev. The chief of them was his
consciousness that in remaining he was fulfilling the demands of love
in regard to Sofya Andreyevna, and was trying to do her good, while
he was performing an act of self-sacrifice for the benefit of his own
soul.

He had also, in the course of the last thirty years of his life, many
grounds for going away; and though, until the time was ripe, they
could not outweigh those that kept him with his family, yet in
themselves they were very weighty.

On one side he was painfully conscious--and ever more painfully as
time went on--of all the injustice, all the sinfulness of the
surroundings of his home life, which were those of a rich landowner
in the midst of the poverty around him, and he never forgave himself
for his participation in those surroundings. Some months before his
death he wrote, as is well known, in the introduction to his novel,
_There are No Guilty in the World_: "The complicated conditions of
the past, my family and its demands, have not let me out of their
clutches"; and, at once, with the fear of self-justification
characteristic of him, hastened to add "or rather I had not the
ability nor strength to free myself from them." But recognising at
that time the hopelessness of his position, Leo Nikolaevitch found a
good side in the fact that it was so painful to him. "Being without
any desire for self-justification, or any fear of the liberated
peasants, and also without the peasants' envy and bitterness against
their oppressors, I am in the most favourable position for seeing the
truth and being able to tell it. Perhaps it was just for this that I
have been placed by fate in this strange position. I will try, as far
as I know how, to take advantage of it. This at least to some extent,
anyway, alleviates my condition."

On the other hand, he was at times much distressed by the
consciousness of the false position in which he was placed before
men, and before the peasants especially, by the external conditions
of his life, which were so directly opposed to his convictions. He
was well aware that the majority of people condemned him for taking
part in that life. But he was resigned even to that, finding a
spiritual blessing in his humiliation before men. In his _Circle of
Reading_[8] he said: "What is called religious folly, _i.e._ conduct
which provokes censure and attack, is intelligible and desirable as
the sole proof of one's love for God and one's neighbour." "The
condemnation by man of your actions," he says in a private letter,
"if your actions are not due to selfish motives, but to doing the
will of God, is far from requiring you to justify them; on the
contrary, this condemnation is a benefit, in that it gives you
certain conviction that you do what you are doing not for the praise
of men, but for the sake of your soul, for God."[9]

But above all Leo Nikolaevitch had to suffer directly from his wife's
antagonism and disagreement with regard to what was for him more
precious than anything. This hostility on the part of his wife often
reached the point of unconcealed hatred of him, making him at times
despair of the possibility of softening her heart at all. As years
went on the spiritual rift between them became complete. Leo
Nikolaevitch had periods of such doubt and depression of spirit that
he felt quite hopeless, and was ready to run away from home. One of
these periods I have referred to above, but even at the beginning of
the 'eighties Leo Nikolaevitch had moments when he could scarcely
restrain himself from going away.

It was so, for instance, in the summer of the year 1884. In his diary
of that time we find such entries: "If only I could have confidence
in myself.... I cannot go on with this savage life. Even for them"
(the members of his family) "it would be a benefit. They will
reconsider things if they have anything like a heart.... I said
nothing, but I felt horribly depressed. I went away, and meant to go
away altogether, but her being with child made me turn back half way
to Tula.... It was horribly painful.... It was a mistake not to go
away. I think it will be bound to happen sooner or later."[10]

After 1884, as Leo Nikolaevitch's spiritual forces developed further
and gained strength, he did succeed to some extent in bearing
patiently the insults and suffering inflicted upon him, and learnt to
resign himself to the painfulness of his position, extracting gain
for his inner life from all that he endured. But how hard it still
was for him may be seen, for instance, from the confession that broke
from him in conversation with a friend of his, the peasant M. P.
Novikov, when the latter visited him on the 21st October, 1910: "I
have never concealed from you that in this house I am boiling as in
hell, and I have always dreamed of going away, and longed to go
somewhere into the forest to a keeper's hut, or to a village to some
lonely peasant's hut, where we could help one another. But God has
not given me the strength to break away from my family. My weakness
is perhaps a sin, but I could not for the sake of my personal
satisfaction make others suffer, even although they are members of my
family...."

During this time everything that was painful in Leo Nikolaevitch's
relations with Sofya Andreyevna, and which had grown with the
decades, began to develop with increased rapidity. In this brief but
terribly concentrated period of his life much which his goodwill
towards her had prevented him from observing in Sofya Andreyevna
before began to be apparent to him. At first it was very difficult
for him to see his way in his complicated position and among all the
varied feelings and impulses which rose up in his soul. He had not
only to bear his old, long familiar cross, but also to deal with new,
quite unforeseen trials before he had time to see clearly what
attitude he ought to take up to them.

These exceptionally complicated conditions must be kept in view in
order to follow Leo Nikolaevitch's spiritual experiences of that
period with any degree of accuracy. It was difficult for him to
understand his own state of mind, and he exercised the greatest
circumspection in order not to act prematurely nor precipitately. It
is all the more necessary for us to be extremely circumspect in
examining the various spiritual states which followed each other and
were interwoven in him at that time. It is impossible to approach the
very complicated workings of his soul with ready-made theories, or to
offer a rough-and-ready explanation of Leo Nikolaevitch's behaviour
on the lines of one's personal bias--whether domestic, religious,
social, or otherwise; and least of all can one be guided by
information or argument coming from his domestic circle, whose vanity
was so deeply wounded by his departure. In order really to understand
Tolstoy and his behaviour in this most important period of his life,
it is above all needful to free oneself from the slightest
partiality, narrowness and one-sidedness, to be ready to look the
truth in the face and as far as possible to weigh attentively all the
conditions and circumstances, not taken separately, but in
combination and in all their complex interaction.


FOOTNOTES

[7] I have come across references to my letter to Dosev as
though it proved that, for all my devotion to Leo Nikolaevitch, I
considered that he ought not to have left his wife. But there is
nothing of the sort in my letter, the main drift of which is merely
that no one has the right to set himself up as a judge of Leo
Nikolaevitch in the matter. I indicated in detail how sound were the
reasons impelling him to remain in Yasnaya Polyana while he did
remain there; but at the same time, in the very same letter, though
it was written before Leo Nikolaevitch went away, I made several
allusions to the possibility that in the end he would think it
necessary to go.

[8] _Circle of Reading_, May 17.

[9] 1907.

[10] June 17-24, 1884.




CHAPTER II

CHANGE FOR THE WORSE IN HIS WIFE'S ATTITUDE TO HIM


And so in the last few months before Leo Nikolaevitch left Yasnaya
Polyana he was subjected in an intensified form to all the agonising
conditions which had for many years made him long to get away from
his family. What went on around him in Yasnaya Polyana, particularly
in the management of the estate, seemed to be purposely calculated
to wound, insult and revolt him more and more in his most sacred
feelings. In her relations with the peasants Sofya Andreyevna, far
from restraining herself through consideration for her husband,
behaved with peculiar injustice and harshness as though to spite
him.[11]

At one time she would try to impress on the peasants that she was
acting with the consent and approval of Leo Nikolaevitch himself; at
another she would boast before him that his championship had no
influence on her arrangements. It is easy to imagine how unutterably
painful all this was for him. It is sufficient to recall how he
sobbed when he chanced to come across a policeman on horseback
dragging along a Yasnaya Polyana peasant caught in the Tolstoys'
forest, an old man whom Leo Nikolaevitch knew well and respected.
Fully realising that he would not in the least improve the position
of the peasants by going away, Leo Nikolaevitch went on regarding
such spectacles as a bitter trial laid upon him, and confining
himself to protesting warmly on every possible occasion. In the same
way, that is as a trial laid upon him, he continued to look upon the
false position in which he was placed in the eyes of the public by
his apparent acceptance of what was done in Yasnaya Polyana. On this
subject he not only continually received abusive letters which he
accepted as a useful exercise in humility, but also from time to time
persons wishing him well addressed him with censure and exhortation.
A letter written by Leo Nikolaevitch at the beginning of 1910 in
answer to an unknown student who had written to persuade him to leave
his privileged surroundings, is characteristic:

"Your letter touched me," wrote Leo Nikolaevitch; "what you advise me
to do is my cherished dream! That I should be living at home with my
wife and daughter in horrible, shameful conditions of luxury in the
midst of the poverty around us tortures me unceasingly and ever more
and more; and not a day passes on which I do not think of carrying
out your advice."

At the same time a third and most painful trial, consisting in his
wife's immediate attitude to him, was intensely accentuated. The
mournful recital of those spiritual agonies which shattered his
health, and which she systematically inflicted on him in the last
months of his life, will be set forth in its time and place. No one
can imagine what he had to endure and to suffer at that time. On one
occasion, calling in D. P. Makovitsky,[12] Leo Nikolaevitch said to
him: "Dushan Petrovitch, go to her" (Sofya Andreyevna) "and tell her
that if she desires my death she is going the right way to bring
it about."[13] In a touching letter of July 14, 1910, to Sofya
Andreyevna, Leo Nikolaevitch, after making her every concession he
considered possible, adds in conclusion: "If you will not accept
these conditions of a good and peaceful life, then I will go away....
I will certainly go away, because it is impossible to go on living
like this."

It will be readily understood that with such a position of affairs
Leo Nikolaevitch began to foresee more and more definitely the
possibility that in the end he would have to leave Yasnaya Polyana.

In a moment of openness he said to his friend, the peasant Novikov:
"Yes, yes, believe me, I tell you frankly I shall not die in this
house. I have made up my mind to go to a strange place where I shall
not be known. And perhaps I may come straight to die in your hut....
I want to prepare for death in peace, and here they think of me as
worth so many roubles. I shall go away, I shall certainly go away."

Only a final decisive shock was needed. In his same letter to the
student he says about going away: "This can and ought only to be done
when it is essential, not for the supposed external objects, but for
the satisfaction of the inner need of the soul,--when to remain in
the old position becomes as morally impossible as it is physically
impossible not to cough when one cannot breathe.... And I am near to
that position, and every day I get nearer and nearer to it."

But Leo Nikolaevitch still did not go away, and remaining continued
to be subjected on an increased scale to the tortures to which he had
been subjected since the 'eighties. And he remained still for the
same reasons as had restrained him for thirty years. He knew that he
would not alleviate the position of the peasants of the district by
going. From his painful position in the eyes of men he drew a
profitable lesson in humility. His wife's attitude to him assisted in
him the development of true love for those who hated his soul. And
therefore the more intense these trials became with the passage of
time, the more painfully they were reflected in his soul, the more
difficult it became for him to deal with them--the more insistent
from the spiritual point of view became the moral duty not to forsake
his post, but to endure to the end.


FOOTNOTES

[11] At the beginning of the eighties of the last century, Leo
Nikolaevitch's feeling against property in general, and the
ownership of land in particular, began to take shape, though it was
only somewhat later that it was fully fixed and confirmed. He
renounced all property for himself personally in 1894, acting as
though in that respect he were dead, that is, leaving the possession
of his former property to those whom he regarded as his heirs, that
is, his family. After this Sofya Andreyevna began to manage the
estate of Yasnaya Polyana, while his children divided the land and
property between them. Later on Leo Nikolaevitch felt, he said, that
he had made a mistake in giving up the land to his "heirs" instead of
to the local peasants, and at the desire of his family confirming the
transfer by legal act.

[12] An intimate friend who shared the views of Leo Nikolaevitch,
a doctor who lived in the Tolstoys' house from the year 1904. He
was of Slovak nationality, and in 1920 left Russia and returned to
Czechoslovakia, where he died in 1921.

[13] From one of the diaries and letters of Tolstoy's friends and
household of the times.




CHAPTER III

THE HISTORY OF THE WILL


In order to understand why Sofya Andreyevna's attitude to Leo
Nikolaevitch was so exasperated, and what impelled her to treat him
so cruelly, it is essential to have some conception why he found it
necessary about this time to make a will, leaving all his writings
free to the public.

The story of Tolstoy's will is so complicated and full of details
that a separate circumstantial account of it is required. Here I will
only briefly state the most essential facts.

At the beginning of the 'eighties, at the time when the spiritual
regeneration of Leo Nikolaevitch was taking place, though his new
attitude of completely disapproving of property was not yet fully
defined, he made over to his wife an authorisation for the
publication and sale of his collected works, the income from which
was the principal source of the material means by which his family
lived. Later on, when he came to realise that property of every kind
was wrong, he did not, in spite of all his efforts, succeed in
persuading Sofya Andreyevna to renounce this income voluntarily and
to give him back the authorisation he had given her. He did not feel
morally justified in forcibly depriving her of what she clung to so
passionately, and what against the will of Leo Nikolaevitch she
considered had been put at the disposal of the family for ever. This
trading in his works by his wife against his wish was, in his own
words, one of the most agonising sufferings of his life. All his new
works, however, those that had appeared after 1881 and those destined
to appear later, he thereupon freed from the monopoly of his family,
announcing in a letter to the newspapers, that all who wished could
reprint them without any fee. Sofya Andreyevna had, willy-nilly, to
submit to this decision on the part of the author. But every time
when, instead of articles of a religious and social character, which
did not in the literary market command the immense value enjoyed by
his artistic works, Leo Nikolaevitch undertook any work in artistic
form, Sofya Andreyevna was so much excited and so persistently
demanded that the publication of the new work should be handed over
to her for the benefit of the family, that it completely destroyed
the spiritual tranquillity which he needed for concentrated creative
work.

Many times repeated, these family scenes led him to decide to print
no more works of art during his lifetime.[14] And this decision of
his is the real reason why, during the latter period of his life, he
gave so little to humanity in that sphere.

In the end Sofya Andreyevna began quite openly to declare, even in
the presence of Leo Nikolaevitch, that after his death, according to
the advice of lawyers whom she had consulted, his renunciation of all
literary property in the works of the second period would lose its
validity, and that those works also would, like all the rest, become
the property of his family. Besides this she began to insist that
Leo Nikolaevitch should give her a fresh authorisation for the sale
of his writings of the first period for a long time in the future and
also give her the right to prosecute at law anyone who should
infringe the copyright.

In his diary for 1909 Leo Nikolaevitch writes: "Last night I felt
wretched after talking to Sofya Andreyevna about publishing my works
and prosecuting. If she only knew and understood how she alone
poisons the last hours, days, months, of my life! I do not know how
to say it to her and have no hope that anything one could say would
produce the slightest effect upon her."[15]

Becoming convinced that this greed of Sofya Andreyevna on behalf of
the family would only increase with years, and that she really was
capable of taking possession of all his works after his death and of
depriving other publishers of the possibility of printing them, Leo
Nikolaevitch felt himself morally bound to guard against such a
monopolisation of his writings. And he was so firmly convinced that
it was his duty before God and men to do this, that in spite of all
that he had to endure on account of it afterwards, he remained
unshaken upon this point right up to his death, which was brought
about by the spiritual sufferings which were inflicted upon him in
consequence of this.[16]

After carefully thinking over all the circumstances of the case and
taking advice of persons conversant with the subject, Leo
Nikolaevitch came to the conclusion that if he really desired that
his writings should be freely accessible to everyone after his
death, he could not secure his object without making a formal will.
And therefore, with this end in view, he decided to have recourse to
that means. The editorship and first publication of all his
posthumous works he entrusted to me, with the understanding that
everything brought out by me should at once become public property.
And in order to make the fulfilment of this task secure in practice,
he made a formal will in favour of his younger daughter Alexandra
Lvovna, which would make it possible for her to safeguard my task
from any attempts to hinder it. The profit on the first issue of his
works after his death he assigned in the first place for the
redemption of the Yasnaya Polyana estate from the Tolstoy family in
order to hand it over to the peasants, and this was duly carried out
after his death.

Of course the legal form of the will could not but be distasteful to
Leo Nikolaevitch. But this was to some extent counterbalanced in his
eyes by the fact that the object of the will was not prosecution of
anyone in the future, but, on the contrary, the prevention of the
possibility of legal proceedings being taken by persons who might put
in claims to inherit proprietary rights in the works of Leo
Nikolaevitch if there had been no such will.

There was also another disagreeable side to this business for Leo
Nikolaevitch. To avoid in connection with the will any altercations
and dissensions, which would have been undesirable in themselves and
would have made the position of Alexandra Lvovna, as legal heiress of
his manuscripts, utterly impossible in the family, Leo Nikolaevitch
resolved not to tell anyone of his will. Though to keep the fact of
the existence of a will secret is a fairly usual thing to do in such
circumstances, it will be readily understood that it was against the
grain for Leo Nikolaevitch, and he resolved to act in this way solely
because he saw no other alternative.[17]

Sofya Andreyevna's fears that Leo Nikolaevitch might make a will
depriving his family of the copyright of his works were the
underlying cause of her hostile attitude to him. It was on account of
this that she made such efforts, on the one hand to wring out of him
the complete transfer of all rights in his works to her, and on the
other hand by incessant watchfulness over him to eliminate all
possibility of his signing any business document without her
knowledge. And it was for this same reason that she was filled with
such hatred for me personally, assuming, though quite mistakenly,
that the initiative in Leo Nikolaevitch's renunciation of his
copyrights and the arrangements for carrying this out came from me.

Leo Nikolaevitch was so firm in his resolution to leave his writings
for the free use of all, that with his own hand he wrote a will in
accordance with that idea, not once only but several times, owing to
the fact that the legal form of the documents he composed were never
sufficiently correct to secure the required authority for them. The
last time he made his will while Sofya Andreyevna was watching over
him most vigilantly, during a ride on horseback in the thickest part
of the forest, having previously invited three persons of the circle
of friends living with me at Telyatniki near Yasnaya Polyana to meet
him there and witness his signature.

By making this will Leo Nikolaevitch secured that after his death his
writings became accessible to all, and not the property of his
family. This result in itself is of vast social importance, seeing
that it gave the working people--the poorest class of all
countries--access to Tolstoy's works in the cheapest form, since
it was open to any number of publishers to print them, and the
competition between them would bring down the price of the books.

But apart from this purely practical gain for the vast masses of
mankind, the struggle between Leo Nikolaevitch and his wife for the
copyright of his works,--the struggle which cost him his life,--had
also a great significance from the ideal side. It displayed before
the eyes of mankind, present and future, an extremely important truth
in connection with the Christian doctrine of the non-resistance to
evil by force which Tolstoy so vividly set forth and lighted up in
his writings. Leo Nikolaevitch completely sacrificing himself showed
in practice that this principle does not lead, as many suppose, to
helplessly giving in to evil and allowing it to triumph unchecked.
Unyieldingly maintaining his rejection of copyright in the interests
of the working masses of mankind, he confirmed by his example, plain
to the whole world, what the less eminent "non-resistants" are
continually exemplifying in their life. He showed that people of
such a theory of life do not give in to evil, but are continually
struggling against it in the best and truest way, by refusing to
take part in it. He showed also that to yield to the demand of
others from meekness and love for them is only admissible up to the
limit beyond which they try to make one do what is against one's
conscience; and that when people's demands pass beyond those limits,
one ought not to yield to them in any way in spite of any sufferings
oneself or those one loves may have to bear.

No insistence on the part of those nearest him, no sufferings of his
own on account of it, were able to compel him in this case to depart
from what he considered himself bound to do. Is it possible to find
a more convincing proof that Tolstoy recognised it as morally
necessary to resist evil in the most resolute way?--and it was just
in consequence of this resistance to evil that he had to sacrifice
both his peace and his life.

In a letter to me of September 10, 1910, Leo Nikolaevitch writes of
his inner experience in a way which is highly significant. He says:
"Of late, not with my brains but with my sides, as the peasants say,
I have come to a clear understanding of the difference between the
resistance which is returning evil for evil and the resistance of
refusing to yield in the line of conduct which one recognises as
one's duty to one's conscience and God. I will try."

At the same time by his attitude to the very idea of literary
property Tolstoy, by the exceptional sincerity and consistency of his
manner of action, has helped and still more will help his literary
brethren to see clearly in this "delicate" question, to shut their
eyes to which has now become impossible. As time passes a greater and
greater number of writers will undoubtedly be troubled by doubts as
to whether it is not as morally reprehensible to traffic in one's
words, in one's soul, as to traffic in one's body, and Tolstoy's
attitude will serve conscientious writers as a guiding star in
illuminating this question.

One cannot but recognise Tolstoy's conspicuous services in all this.
And though he acted as he did without considering what bearing this
would have on the consciousness of men, merely striving not to
let himself be drawn into an action contrary to his conscience,
nevertheless this first renunciation of literary property on the part
of one of the greatest writers of the world undoubtedly has a vast
significance for humanity.

If in my present brief account of Tolstoy's leaving home I have
had to dwell rather minutely upon the question of his will, it
is because all the threads of the complicated conditions and
circumstances which caused his departure meet about that central
question. It is true that some of those near to Leo Nikolaevitch have
tried to persuade themselves that Sofya Andreyevna's attitude to him,
which made it impossible for him to remain longer with her, was
chiefly provoked by property interests not connected with his will.
They ascribe her conduct to various causes and principally to her
neurotic condition and morbid, abnormal jealousy. Although putting
the matter in such a light is undoubtedly due to affectionate
goodwill to Sofya Andreyevna, I consider it my duty to protest
against such an interpretation most decisively in the interests of
truth, which here as everywhere is more important than anything.
We ought not to hide from ourselves that there are more than a
sufficient quantity of facts going to prove that Sofya Andreyevna in
this case acted first of all, and most of all, under the influence of
feelings and considerations immediately concerned with the material
prosperity of her numerous family, consisting, as she was continually
reminding people, of twenty-eight persons, counting children and
grandchildren. It is essential to keep this circumstance in view in
order to have a correct understanding of the attitude of Leo
Nikolaevitch to his will.

True love for people dead and alive alike is not shown by concealing
their mistakes and failures from oneself and others, but in knowing
how, in spite of all the undesirable qualities which every one of us
has in sufficient quantity, to behave to one another with compassion
and tolerance, recognising that everyone is responsible for all. Then
we shall not try to pass by the weak spots without noticing them, or
to smear over the cracks on the outside, but shall, on the contrary,
display them in order that they may be corrected by the efforts of
all.

The above-mentioned circumstances and motives of the testamentary
dispositions of Leo Nikolaevitch in regard to his writings must be
kept in mind if one is to have a true conception of his position in
the family at the period immediately preceding his "going away." An
acquaintance with those circumstances and impulses makes it possible
to understand the true character of the relations which have been
formed between Leo Nikolaevitch and her with whom he had been
connected for forty-eight long years and out of love and pity for
whom he was ready to sacrifice all but his conscience.


FOOTNOTES

[14] This decision, which Leo Nikolaevitch reached alone
with his conscience, he tried to keep a secret from everyone, and
when, guessing from certain signs how it was, I told him on one
occasion, he was much puzzled to know how I could have discovered his
secret. To explain why this decision not to publish his artistic work
during his lifetime put a stop to Leo Nikolaevitch's work upon them,
it must be pointed out that it was his habit to make the chief
revision of his first rough sketches on the proofs sent him from the
printer's. Besides, if he had merely worked at them in manuscript he
would have been subjected to the same persistent persecution which so
distracted his peace and his concentration upon his work. (Sofya
Andreyevna told me that she had actually exacted a promise from him
not to give anyone but herself his manuscripts to copy.)

[15] D. P. Makovitsky in his diary says the same thing: "In
1909 before the Stockholm Peace Congress, Sofya Andreyevna wanted to
prosecute I. I. Gorbunov for publishing _The Prisoner in the
Caucasus_, and sent Torba (a Court official, her helper in publishing
Tolstoy's works) to see a lawyer. The lawyer asked what authority
Sofya Andreyevna had for instituting proceedings. 'She has a deed of
trust for transacting all Leo Nikolaevitch's affairs.' 'This is not
enough, she must have a deed transferring the copyright to her.'
Sofya Andreyevna asked Leo Nikolaevitch for it, but he refused point
blank. Then Sofya Andreyevna had recourse to hysterics and did not
let Leo Nikolaevitch go to Stockholm. In the summer of that year
she started playing very cleverly the same game (this time against
Tchertkoff), pretending to be ill in order to force Leo Nikolaevitch
to give her the copyright. It was not Sofya Andreyevna who said the
other thing, but Misha and Andryusha. They blurted out about the
will."--(Sept. 14, 1910, Kotchety.)

[16] A clear light is thrown upon what Leo Nikolaevitch had
to endure in this connection by a letter which a relation of his, the
lawyer I. V. Denisenko, wrote for my benefit when I was exiled from
the province of Tula in 1909, and being unable to be at Yasnaya
Polyana, did not know what was taking place there. I append a few
abstracts from the letter to complete the picture:

"In the July of 1909, when I was at Yasnaya Polyana, Leo Nikolaevitch
Tolstoy was intending to go to the Peace Congress at Stockholm, and
Sofya Andreyevna was opposed to this. This provoked a regular series
of misunderstandings and Sofya Andreyevna fell ill, not wishing Leo
Nikolaevitch to go to the Congress.

"It happened once that she called me into her bedroom, and showing me
a general authorisation for the management of their affairs given her
long ago by Leo Nikolaevitch, asked me whether she could upon this
authorisation sell to a third person the right of publishing his
work, and, what was still more important, institute proceedings
against Sergeyenko and some teacher in a military school for making
books of extracts and anthologies from the works of Leo Nikolaevitch
on the ground that these books of extracts would cause her, Sofya
Andreyevna, considerable material damage....

"I believe it was on the day after that that I was in the park
picking berries with my wife and children. My wife asked me to
go for something to the lodge. I went along an avenue, passing
between flower-beds, and there quite unexpectedly I came upon Leo
Nikolaevitch. I was struck by his appearance. He was bowed and he
looked worried and exhausted. His eyes were dim and he seemed weak as
I had never seen him before. He caught hurriedly at my arm on meeting
me, and said with tears in his eyes: 'Ivan Vassilyevitch, darling,
what is she doing to me? What is she doing to me? She is insisting on
having an authorisation for instituting proceedings. You know I can't
do that.... It would be against my principles.'

"Then walking a few steps with me he said: 'I have a great favour to
ask of you, only let it be a secret between us. For the time don't
speak of it to anyone, not even to Sasha. Please make up a deed for
me by which I could announce publicly that I give all my works at
whatever date they may have been written freely for the benefit of
all.'"

[17] There was even a moment when these two undesirable
conditions associated with the will, _i.e._ its legal form and the
secrecy accompanying it, caused Leo Nikolaevitch to feel doubts as
to the rectitude of his action. These doubts were aroused by a
conversation with one of his intimate friends, who came in from
outside and knew little of the circumstances of this complicated
affair. Leo Nikolaevitch, who was distinguished by an extreme degree
of touching sensitiveness to every criticism of his behaviour,
agreed with his friend that he had acted, as the latter asserted,
"inconsistently," and he told me of it, declaring, however, that he
should nevertheless not change the dispositions he had made. On my
side I was compelled to reply that in that case of course I should
refuse to be his future executor for carrying out his testamentary
dispositions, since only a conviction that I was accomplishing his
definite and conscious desire could give me the necessary moral
support for the performance of this difficult and responsible duty.
At the same time, in accordance with his request, I reminded him of
the circumstances and considerations which had induced him to have
recourse to a will. In answer I received from him the following
letter:

"I write this on little scraps of paper because I am in the woods out
for a walk. Ever since yesterday evening I have been thinking about
your yesterday's letter. The two chief feelings which it aroused in
me were repulsion for the manifestations of coarse greed and
heartlessness which I either did not see or have seen and forgotten,
and distress and repentance that I should have hurt you by the letter
in which I expressed regret for what I had done. The deduction I have
made from the letter is that N. N. was wrong, and also that I was
wrong in agreeing with him, and that I fully approve your conduct,
but all the same am not satisfied with my own: I feel that it was
possible to act better, but I don't know how. Now I do not regret
what I have done, _i.e._ that I have made the will I did make, and I
can only be thankful to you for the interest you have taken in the
matter.

"I shall tell Tanya about it to-day, and that will be very pleasant
to me.

  "Leo Tolstoy.

  "_Aug. 12, 1910._"

In his private pocket diary on Aug. 11, 1910, Leo Nikolaevitch wrote
as follows:

"A long letter from Tchertkoff describing all that has gone before.
Very sad. Painful to read and recall. He is perfectly right, and I
feel to blame in regard to him. N. N. was wrong. I will write to both
of them."

Certain persons who, for one reason or another, do not sympathise
with the testamentary dispositions of Leo Nikolaevitch, and
especially those of them who took a personal share in the upsetting
of them, continue to this day to assert that Leo Nikolaevitch saw in
the end that he had made a mistake and regretted that he had made a
will.

In confirmation of this they quote a few words written by Leo
Nikolaevitch in his pocket diary at the time of his doubts; but they
are carefully silent with regard to the later note in the same diary
which I have just quoted.

In reality, of course, this incident of Leo Nikolaevitch's hesitation
can only serve to prove how consciously from every point of view he
weighed and considered all the circumstances of the case. If no
doubts had ever assailed him it would have been possible to admit the
supposition that it had never occurred to him to look at the question
from the other side, and that therefore his attitude to it was
one-sided. But now we know that he not only took a critical attitude
as to his action, but that at one time he even doubted if it were
right. If, even after such hesitation, he yet definitely confirmed
his desire that the will should remain in force, what can be a better
proof that this his final decision expresses his real and fully
conscious will?--Cf. _Diary_, Vol. I. ed. 1916; Appendix, p. 260,
"The Will," July 22, 1910.




CHAPTER IV

INTERVALS OF REST--IN OTHER PEOPLE'S HOUSES


The only intervals of freedom and rest which Leo Nikolaevitch could
enjoy from the indescribably painful conditions of life at Yasnaya
Polyana at that period were afforded him by the rare occasions when
he succeeded in getting away for a week or two to stay with some one
of his more intimate friends. Thus during the last year of his life
he stayed on two occasions with his daughter Tatyana Lvovna, in the
Mtsensk district, and with me (I was in exile from the Tula
province), the first time at Kryokshino in the Zvenigorodsky district
near Moscow, and afterwards at Meshtcherskoe in the Serpuhovsky
district. But he very rarely succeeded in arranging these visits, and
only did so with great trouble, since Sofya Andreyevna opposed them
in every way; and if, in spite of her opposition, he did make up his
mind to go away, it would sometimes happen that at the last minute
she would decide to go with him, which, of course, spoilt the chief
object of the excursion.

I remember on both occasions when he came to us how extremely
shattered, worn out and ill Leo Nikolaevitch looked, and how
perceptibly before our eyes he improved physically and revived
spiritually. Even on the second or third day of a calm life, and in a
circle of friends of the same way of thinking, who guarded his
spiritual peace and fully respected his independence, he was
completely changed. It was as though some crushing, agonising burden
had fallen off him; his face was brighter in expression, his
movements became vigorous, in the morning he worked with
concentration for many hours on end at his writings, amazing us all
by the number of written pages which he afterwards gave us to copy
out. During his daily walks he went so rapidly and so far that it was
difficult for people much younger to keep up with him. With the
visitors of the most varied kind, of whom numbers were always
flocking to see him, and from whom no one in our house shut him off
as at home, he carried on lively conversations in his free time, in
that way coming into direct contact with the surrounding world. In
conversation with his friends no one interrupted him or contradicted
him at every turn, an annoyance to which he was continually subjected
at home, and therefore communion with those surrounding him here
afforded him joyous spiritual relief. Everything showed what vast
stores of energy were still preserved in him; it was clear that under
favourable conditions he might for many years to come lead an active
life to the joy and profit of humanity.

His inner spiritual revival was shown very conspicuously in the fact
that every day he became more and more drawn to artistic creation. At
first he noted down characteristic meetings and conversations which
took place during his walks. And each time before he went away he
told me with confident eagerness that great, purely artistic works
were stirring within him and taking shape in his soul, and that he
hoped now to set to work upon them. But these plans were not destined
to be realised, since on his return to Yasnaya Polyana the painful
conditions which have been indicated already were renewed, and calm
creative work was inconsistent with them.

Altogether the difference between his condition, both physical and
spiritual, when he arrived and when he left us was striking. I
remember how I met him in the garden at the end of his last stay with
us at Meshtcherskoe, where he had arrived almost in a state of
collapse. He walked quickly and he looked remarkably vigorous and
many years younger. With an air of lively surprise he greeted me with
the words: "I don't understand what it is in your diet, but whenever
I stay with you my digestion seems to become perfect." It is well
known that the best conditions for a man suffering from defective
digestion are simple, not elaborately prepared, food adapted to his
requirements, and above all an even, untroubled spiritual atmosphere
in all his home life. But Leo Nikolaevitch expected so little by way
of attention from others to his needs and tastes, he attached so
little significance for himself to the influence of external
surroundings, that it seemed as though it did not enter his head to
connect the state of his health with the conditions surrounding him.




CHAPTER V

THE LAST PERIOD


The last and most painful period of Leo Nikolaevitch's life at
Yasnaya Polyana began in June 1910, when, on a visit at my summer
bungalow at Meshtcherskoe, in the province of Moscow, he was suddenly
summoned back to Yasnaya Polyana by a telegram from Sofya Andreyevna,
informing him of her sudden illness; as it afterwards turned out, a
sham one.

On his return to Yasnaya Polyana, Sofya Andreyevna surrounded his
life with new restrictions, finally depriving him of even the limited
share of personal freedom which he had until that time enjoyed. She
gave up respecting his hours of literary work, for which she had once
shown consideration, and by continually bursting in upon him and
making scenes, she made it impossible for him to devote himself to
the literary work in which he recognised his service to men. His
daily walks had become his sole recreation and solace, and now she
began to hinder him from going where he wished to go, and from
taking with him those whom he wanted to take. She insisted that he
should completely give up seeing those of his most intimate friends
whose supposed influence on him she feared.[18] Even inside the house
she subjected all his actions and conversations to a control which
was never relaxed, not disdaining even the most indelicate methods,
as, for instance, eavesdropping, with her shoes off at doors, and
altogether watching day and night over every action he took. As has
already been mentioned, she was demanding from him such an
authorisation for the disposal of his works as would give her the
power to take legal proceedings in connection with them, and to
retain the copyright over a prolonged period in the future.
Apprehensive of what he might write in his diary, she tried to
prevent his giving the manuscript books of his diary to anyone
whatever, even to those whom he charged with work of one sort or
another in connection with them, or in whose keeping he desired them
to be preserved for the sake of greater security. She secretly stole
from his pockets those very private diaries which he kept and carried
about with him during the most painful periods of his life and
scrupulously preserved from every human eye. Not only did she fail to
conceal from him and others her distrust and--terrible to say--hatred
for him, but openly in the hearing of all gave utterance to these
feelings and often expressed them to him in so harsh a form that it
brought on heart attacks and even fainting fits in him. She was
jealous, or pretended to be jealous, of some of his most intimate
friends, bound to him by the closest spiritual unity. In this
connection also she openly expressed to those about her, and to
outsiders and to Leo Nikolaevitch himself, such incredibly revolting
suspicions as the tongue cannot bring itself to repeat, thereby
reducing Leo Nikolaevitch almost to complete collapse and driving
him to lock all the doors of his room. And with all this she did
everything she could to prevent his going away from Yasnaya Polyana,
even for the briefest visits which might have enabled him to have at
least some rest from the atmosphere of his home, and to gain fresh
strength to endure further tortures.

All these requests and others similar to them Sofya Andreyevna did
not merely put in words before Leo Nikolaevitch, but if he refused,
tried by her whole behaviour to force him against his will to submit
to her.[19] For this purpose she resorted to simulated fits of
hysteria and madness, threatened to commit suicide, pretended that
she would swallow or had swallowed poison, ran half dressed out of
doors in the rain or snow or at night, making them search for her all
over the park, and running in to him at any time of the day or the
night, even when, utterly exhausted, he had dropped asleep, and
waking him up with the object of worrying the concessions she wanted
out of him. There is no recounting all the unutterably cruel means to
which she unhesitatingly resorted for the sake of forcibly compelling
him. And when the members of her family told her that she would kill
him by such conduct, she answered coldly that his soul had long been
dead for her and that she did not care for his body; and if she were
asked what she would do and how she would feel if he really did die
of her treatment, she would say, "I shall go at last to Italy; I have
never been there."

Leo Nikolaevitch for his part, so long as he thought it right to
remain with his wife, tried with strikingly touching meekness to
gratify all her wishes and to comply with all her demands which did
not run counter to his conscience. When he considered them
unreasonable, at first he refused, but as she obstinately insisted
and resorted to her usual methods, in the end he often gave way in
those cases also; at one time regarding her as quite insane, and
being apprehensive that in a moment of frenzy she really might do
herself some mischief.

He was only unhesitating in his resistance when his conscience told
him that he ought not to give way. Thus, in spite of all Sofya
Andreyevna's importunities and strategy, he made his will and did not
change it to the end; he did not give her the authority to take legal
proceedings; he did not hand over his diaries to her, but put them in
a place of safety (in the bank at Tula). But since what was most
necessary for her object was just that in which he found it
impossible to give way to her, it was precisely with these demands
that she persecuted him most. And so all his concessions, instead of
pacifying her, only encouraged her in more persistent importunities
and still more cruel means of oppression.


FOOTNOTES

[18] The members of Tolstoy's household who were most
intimate with him--Alexandra Lvovna Tolstoy, D. P. Makovitsky and
Varvara Mihailovna Feokritova--were convinced that Sofya Andreyevna's
hatred of me was a sham. This is proved, for instance, by the
following extract from Makovitsky's diary:

"While I was riding with Leo Nikolaevitch to-day, I was thinking of
Sofya Andreyevna's behaviour since June 24, and I came to the
conclusion that in reality she is not, and never has been, jealous of
Tchertkoff. She pretended to be jealous simply in order to separate
him from Leo Nikolaevitch, and prevent him from influencing Leo
Nikolaevitch; she thought it was due to Tchertkoff's influence that
Leo Nikolaevitch wanted to give away his works to the public....

"And how well she played the part and deceived L. N., Tchertkoff,
Tatyana Lvovna, and me (we were all convinced that she was jealous of
Tchertkoff). I spoke of this to-day, and Varvara Mihailovna and
Alexandra Lvovna answered that they had noticed the same thing long
ago (that is, that there was no jealousy), and had put it down in
their diaries" (October 13, 1910).

[19] D. P. Makovitsky records the following incident:

"The day before yesterday she made a scene again: fell at Leo
Nikolaevitch's feet and begged him to give her the keys of the safe
in the bank where his diaries or the will were kept. Leo Nikolaevitch
said that he could not do it and went out. As he passed under her
windows Sofya Andreyevna leaned out and cried, 'I have taken opium.'
Leo Nikolaevitch rushed upstairs to her, but she met him with the
words, 'That was not true, I did not take any.' This scene upset Leo
Nikolaevitch very much, and he said to Sofya Andreyevna, 'You are
doing all you can to make me leave home.' After this he had
palpitations and almost fainted. He had attempted to run up the
stairs, and during those moments of terror and agitation was living
through his wife's death" (July 19, 1910)




CHAPTER VI

MENTAL AGONY


It will be readily understood that no health could hold out against
such torments lasting over several months at a stretch, no less
severe, it may be said, than the tortures of the Inquisition, and
exceeding them in their uninterrupted persistence and prolongation.
And indeed, returning to Yasnaya in a vigorous and excellent state of
health, Leo Nikolaevitch began visibly fading away before her eyes in
the nightmare period of the last months of his life: in the course of
a few weeks he looked so old and drawn, so weak and thin, so pale and
in every respect so physically run down as to be unrecognisable. In
the course of those months he had several attacks of faintness. By
the day of his departure he looked only the shadow of himself: his
heart, his nerves, all his forces were utterly undermined, and of
course, under such conditions, the slightest ailment was sure to
carry him off, as happened indeed with the first cold he chanced to
catch immediately after he went away.

All Sofya Andreyevna's conduct during those last months of their life
together revealed to Leo Nikolaevitch much in her that he had never
noticed before. He was not only led to doubt of his cherished dream
of softening her heart by his all-forgiving love; he began even to
feel uncertain whether he were doing her harm or good by being near
her, and whether the doctors were not right who in her interests
advised them to live apart.[20] And in the end he became convinced
that his presence really was a direct incitement to evil for her,
calling out and accentuating all the worst sides of her character.
Speaking of his departure with that same Novikov a week before it
took place, Leo Nikolaevitch said: "For my own sake I have not done
this and could not do it, but now I see that it would be better for
my family, there would be less dispute among them on my account,
less sin."

Another reason that had previously restrained him from going away lay
in the fact that he considered that the ordeal to which he was
continually exposed in his wife's company was profitable for his own
soul, and found in it a spiritual satisfaction. But in the end Sofya
Andreyevna, as she herself expressed it after his death, "overdid it"
in her behaviour with him, putting him in such a position that
instead of satisfaction he began to experience the sense of
awkwardness and shame which one feels in taking part in something
unbecoming, unseemly. Two days before he went away he wrote to me: "I
feel something _unbefitting, something shameful_ in my position." And
in the letter to Alexandra Lvovna the day after he went away he says:
"I do not feel _that shame, that awkwardness_, that lack of freedom
which I always used to feel at home." In his last letter to Sofya
Andreyevna from Shamardino he states even more definitely that to
return to her when she is in such a state of mind would be equivalent
to committing suicide, and he did not consider that he had a right to
do that. So by now he no longer believed that staying with Sofya
Andreyevna was profitable for his own soul, and recognised it as
undesirable.

In the course of the later years his hesitation had increased with
every day, and at times he seemed to be on the very point of
flight.[21] He only stayed through not feeling as yet that
irresistible impulse which, as he so well recognised, was _essential_
in order that he might take this momentous step, not through rational
considerations alone, but with all his soul, confidently and
inevitably. And so long as this impulse was lacking and he was
more or less weighing the _pros_ and _cons_ of his departure, the
consideration that for him personally to go away would be a relief,
and that there would be more self-sacrifice in remaining, retained
its force. Thus I have been told that two days before his departure,
when he informed his old friend, the old lady Marya Alexandrovna
Schmidt (who, by the way, later on fully understood and approved his
departure), that he thought of leaving Yasnaya Polyana, and she
thereupon exclaimed: "Leo Nikolaevitch darling, it will pass, it is a
moment's weakness," he hastened to reply: "Yes, yes, I know that it
is a weakness and I hope that it will pass."

So that in spite of the fact that Leo Nikolaevitch had now become
aware of a new phase in Sofya Andreyevna's relations to him, which in
reality removed any reasonable purpose in his remaining at her side,
and justified his departure, since his presence was becoming bad for
her and unprofitable for him, nevertheless he still lingered on,
dreading to act prematurely, and as it were waiting for the last
decisive shock.

And this shock was not long in coming with startling abruptness.


FOOTNOTES

[20] At the advice of all his friends and members of his
household Leo Nikolaevitch went in September to stay with his
daughter Tatyana Lvovna Suhotin (at Kotchety) in order to have a rest
from family scenes. But Sofya Andreyevna would not leave him in peace
even there. This is what we read in Makovitsky's diary:

"This is the third day that Sofya Andreyevna is perfectly frantic.
Leo Nikolaevitch sent me to her several times during the day; in the
morning she was in her room; she complained of headache and said that
she had taken no food for two days; in the afternoon she ran off into
the garden.

"Sofya Andreyevna spent the whole day by herself in the park. Leo
Nikolaevitch sent me to find her.

"'Oh, Dushan Petrovitch!' he said to me, 'it's worse than ever;
everything is going to the worst. Sofya Andreyevna insists that I
should go away with her. But I simply cannot do it, for her demands
go _crescendo_ and _crescendo_. I don't know what to do!'" (September
11, 1910, Kotchety.)

[21] Thus in D. P. Makovitsky's diary we read:

"Leo Nikolaevitch spoke to Alexandra Lvovna of how heavy their family
atmosphere was, and said that if it had not been for her he would
have gone away. He is on the alert. Yesterday morning he asked me
what were the morning trains to the south. He had said to Marya
Alexandrovna, and before that to us, that he has not been able to
work for the last four months and that Sofya Andreyevna keeps
running in to him, and always suspecting that some secrets are
being concealed from her, written documents and conversations"
(October 26, 1910).




CHAPTER VII

THE NIGHT OF TOLSTOY'S GOING AWAY


It happened very simply. On the night of the 27th October, at a time
when it was supposed that Leo Nikolaevitch was asleep, as he lay in
bed he heard and saw through a crack in his door Sofya Andreyevna
steal softly into his study and search among the papers on his
writing-table. Then as she was going away, noticing the light in his
room, she went in and began with an anxious face inquiring how he
was. This cold hypocrisy on her part apparently destroyed the last
illusion of Leo Nikolaevitch. Only a few days before he had been
touched by the solicitude with which Sofya Andreyevna, coming into
his bedroom in the same way at night, had climbed on to a chair and
had set right the movable frame which had been insecurely fastened.
Now he remembered that he had heard a rustle the night before too,
and the real value of Sofya Andreyevna's care of him was suddenly
revealed to him. Chance had unmasked the awful, systematic comedy
which was being played from day to day around him, and in which he
had unconsciously to play the central part.

In his diary he describes what he endured that night as follows:--

"I went to bed at half-past eleven, slept till three o'clock. Woke
again. As on previous nights, the opening of doors and footsteps. On
the previous nights I did not look towards my door; this time I
glanced towards it and saw through the crack a bright light in the
study and heard rustling. It was Sofya Andreyevna looking for
something, probably reading something. On the evening before she
begged and insisted that I should not lock the doors. Both her doors
were opened so that she could hear my slightest movement. Both by day
and by night all my movements and my words must be known to her and
be under her control. Again footsteps, a cautious opening of the door
and she goes out. I don't know why that aroused in me an
irrepressible repulsion and indignation. I tried to go to sleep. I
could not; I turned from side to side for about an hour, lighted a
candle and sat up. The door opens and Sofya Andreyevna walks in,
asking after my health and wondering at the light which she has seen
in my room. Repulsion and indignation grow. I am breathless; I count
my pulse seventy-seven. I cannot lie still, and suddenly take a final
resolution to go away. I write her a letter; I begin packing what is
most necessary, only to get away. I wake Dushan, then Sasha; they
help me to pack."

As Alexandra Lvovna described, she and her companion Varvara
Mihailovna (the amanuensis) were awake that night. She kept fancying
that someone was walking about and talking overhead. She was afraid
that discussions were taking place between her father and mother.
They fell asleep towards morning, but soon heard a knock at the door.
Alexandra Lvovna went to the door and opened it.

"Who is it?" she asked.

"It is I, Leo Nikolaevitch.... I am going away at once ... for
good.... Come and help me pack."

Alexandra Lvovna said afterwards that she would never forget his
figure in the doorway, in a blouse, with a candle in his hand and a
bright face resolute and beautiful.

In haste to get away, Leo Nikolaevitch dreaded one thing only: that
Sofya Andreyevna might come upon him before he succeeded in getting
off, and the calm realisation of his unalterable decision might
thereby be troubled.

"I tremble at the thought that she will hear, will come out--a scene,
hysterics, and no getting away in the future without a scene. By six
o'clock everything has been packed after a fashion. I go to the
stable to order the horses; Sasha and Varya finish the packing.... It
is night, pitch dark. I get off the path to the lodge, fall into the
bushes, get scratched, knock against trees, fall down, lose my cap,
cannot find it; with difficulty make my way out, go home, take a cap,
and with a lantern make my way to the stable and order the horses to
be harnessed. Sasha, Dushan, Varya come. I tremble, expecting
pursuit. But at last we get off. At Shtchekino we wait an hour, and
every minute I expect her to appear. But at last we are in the
railway carriage and set off. Alarm passes, and pity for her rises,
but no doubt as to whether I have done what I ought. Perhaps I am
mistaken in justifying myself but it seems to me that I have saved
myself not as Leo Nikolaevitch, but have saved what at times at least
to some small degree there is in me."




CHAPTER VIII

TOLSTOY'S RELATION TO HIS WIFE


After his departure Leo Nikolaevitch never for a minute repented what
he had done, and never considered the idea of his return to Sofya
Andreyevna. When his daughter Alexandra Lvovna several days
afterwards asked him whether he could regret his action, he answered:
"Of course not. Can a man regret something when he _could not_ act
differently?"

And why he could not act differently he told her openly in his letter
of the 29th October: "For me, with this spying, eavesdropping,
everlasting reproaches, disposing of me according to caprice,
everlasting control, pretence of hatred for the man who is nearest
and most necessary to me, with this obvious hatred for me and
affectation of love ... such a life is not merely unpleasant for me,
but utterly impossible. If anyone is to drown oneself it is not
she but I.... I desire one thing only, freedom from her, from
the falsity, hypocrisy and malice with which her whole being is
saturated.... All her behaviour to me not only shows a lack of love,
but seems to have been unmistakably aimed at killing me...."

These words broke from Leo Nikolaevitch like the irrepressible shriek
from the tortured soul of a man who had for long years been
accustomed to hide in himself the deepest and most poignant of his
sufferings. And therefore after giving vent for once to his need to
speak out to his favourite daughter, he at once hastens to comment:
"You see, dear, how bad I am. I do not conceal myself from you."[22]

This letter is important for us, Leo Nikolaevitch's friends, because
it raises a little corner of the curtain with which for the last ten
years of his life he scrupulously covered from the eye of man the
inner tortures he experienced. Were it not for this "human document"
it might have been supposed that, having attained the marvellous
height of spiritual illumination which distinguished the latter
period of his life, Leo Nikolaevitch was thereby saved from the
possibility of feeling insult and experiencing spiritual pain. Now
we know that if in his diary, in his correspondence and in
conversation with his friends he abstained for the most part from any
complaints of the bitterness of his position, preferring to note his
own mistakes and weaknesses, he did this not because he was at that
time free from the common human characteristic of feeling pain
inflicted upon him. We now see that to the very end of his days he
had not ceased to be for us ordinary people a comrade capable of
feeling the same mortifications and sufferings as we. For that reason
we ought to be grateful to fate which for one instant revealed before
us in that letter the deep spiritual wound which Leo Nikolaevitch
bore away with him when he left his wife. But at the same time it
would be quite a mistake to suppose that though he left Sofya
Andreyevna he retained any evil feeling towards her and was not
capable of forgiving her. On the contrary, almost at the same time as
the letter to his daughter which we have quoted, he wrote his wife a
touching, warm-hearted letter which leaves not the slightest doubt of
his real love for her. And on the following day he wrote to his two
elder children: "Please try and soothe your mother, for whom I have
the most sincere feeling of compassion and love." And he not only
pitied Sofya Andreyevna, but had so much real love for her that he
could with a pure heart forgive her, and himself beg her forgiveness.

Altogether the last letters of Leo Nikolaevitch to his wife, which
have, by the way, been published by her,[23] strikingly reveal some
characteristic peculiarities in his relations with her during the
latest period of their life together. The most conspicuous
peculiarity is that in spite of the very painful crises Leo
Nikolaevitch had passed through in his family relations, the habitual
and extremely delicate consideration in his behaviour to Sofya
Andreyevna never left him for one minute. Consequently when telling
her the causes of his departure, he does not without necessity touch
upon those of his impulses which were disagreeable to her. Avoiding
them as far as possible, he accentuates those of his motives which
had a general character and did not wound her vanity. He only alludes
to the points in which she had been to blame towards him when it is
quite unavoidable, and touches on those questions as gently and
carefully as possible.

I will quote those of his letters which directly concern his
departure, beginning with one written thirteen years before he
actually went away, at a time when he was intending to leave his
family but did not do so. He directed that this letter should be
given to his wife after his death, which was done.


I

  "_June 8, 1897._

"Dear Sonya,

"For a long time past I have been worried by the inconsistency of my
life with my convictions. To make you change your life, your habits
in which I have trained you, I could not; go away from you hitherto I
could not either, thinking that I should deprive the children while
they were small of at least that little influence I might have on
them, and should be grieving you; nor can I any longer continue to
live as I have lived these sixteen years, at one time struggling and
irritating you, at another myself, succumbing to the temptations to
which I am accustomed, and by which I am surrounded; and I have
determined now to do what I have long wanted to do--go away: in the
first place, because for me with my advancing years this life becomes
more and more oppressive, and I long more and more for solitude; and
secondly, because my children are grown up, my influence is not now
needed in the house, and all of you have interests more vital to you
which will make you feel my absence less.

"The chief thing is that just as the Hindus when close on sixty go
away into the forest, as every religious old man longs to devote the
last years of his life to God, and not to jests, to puns, to gossip
and to tennis, so I, entering on my seventieth year, long with my
whole soul for peace, for solitude, and if not for complete harmony,
at least not the glaring discord between one's life and one's
convictions, one's conscience.

"If I were to do this openly there would be entreaties, upbraidings,
arguments, complaints; I should lose courage, perhaps, and not carry
out my decision although it ought to be carried out. And therefore
please forgive if my action hurts you, and in thy soul do thou,
Sonya, especially, let me go with a good will; do not look for me,
don't lament over me, or complain against me; do not blame me.

"That I have gone away from you does not show that I was displeased
with you. I know that you literally could not see and feel as I do,
and therefore could not and cannot change your life and make
sacrifices for what you do not recognise. And therefore I do not
blame you, but, on the contrary, with love and gratitude remember
the thirty-five long years of our life, especially the first half
of the time, when with a motherly self-sacrifice, which is part
of your nature, you so vigorously and firmly bore that which you
considered your vocation. You have given me and the world what
you could give--you have given a great deal of motherly love and
self-sacrifice, and one cannot but value you for it. But in the later
period of our life--the last fifteen years--we have grown apart. I
cannot think that I am to blame, because I know that I have changed
neither for my own sake nor for other people's, but because I could
do nothing else. I cannot blame you either for not following me, but
I thank you and think of you, and always shall think of you, with
love for what you have given me.

  "Farewell, dear Sonya,
      "Your loving
        "LEO TOLSTOY."

(Cf. _Letters to his Wife_, p. 524.)


II

  "_Yasnaya Polyana._
    "_October 28, 1910._

"My going away will grieve you. I am sorry for it, but do understand
and believe that I cannot act differently. My position in the house
is becoming, has become, unbearable. Apart from everything else, I
cannot any longer live in the conditions of luxury in which I have
been living, and I am doing what old men of my age commonly do--they
retire from worldly life to spend their last days in solitude and
quiet. Please understand this and do not come after me if you find
out where I am. Your coming in that way would only make your and my
position worse and would not alter my decision.

"I thank you for these forty-eight years of faithful life with me,
and beg you to forgive me for anything in which I have been to blame
towards you, even as I with all my soul forgive you for anything in
which you may have been to blame towards me. I advise you to resign
yourself to the new position in which my departure places you, and
not to have any ill-feeling against me.

"If you want to communicate with me, give everything to Sasha. She
will know where I am and will forward anything that is necessary; she
cannot tell you where I am, because I have made her promise not to
tell anyone."

(_Letters to his Wife_, p. 590.)


III

  "_Shamordino._
    "_October 31, 1910._

"A meeting between us and still more my return is now utterly
impossible. For you it would be, as everyone declares, highly
injurious, and for me it would be awful, since now, in consequence of
your excitement, irritation and morbid condition, my position would,
if that is possible, be worse than ever. I advise you to resign
yourself to what has happened, to settle down in your new position,
and above all to attend to your health. To say nothing of loving, if
you don't absolutely hate me you ought to enter a little into my
position. And if you do that you not only will not blame me, but will
try to help me to find peace and the possibility of some sort of
human life, to help me by controlling yourself, and you will not wish
me to come back now. Your mood as at present, your desire to commit
suicide and efforts to do so, show more than anything your loss of
self-control, and make my return unthinkable at present. No one but
yourself can save all who are near you, me and above all yourself,
from sufferings such as we have endured in the past.[24]

"Try to direct all your energies not to bringing about what you
desire--at present my return--but to bringing peace to your soul, and
you will get what you desire.

"I have spent two days at Shamordino and Optina Pustyn, and am going
away. I will post this letter on the way. I do not say where I am
going, because I consider separation essential both for you and for
me. Do not think that I am going away because I do not love you: I
love and pity you with all my soul, but I cannot do otherwise than I
am doing.

"Your letter I know was written sincerely, but you are not capable of
doing what you would wish to. And what matters is not the fulfilment
of any of my desires or demands, but only your balance, your calm,
reasonable attitude to life. And while that is lacking my life with
you is not thinkable. To return to you while you are in such a state
would be equivalent to committing suicide. And I do not consider that
I have a right to do that. Farewell, dear Sonya. God help you. Life
is no jesting matter, and we have no right to throw it away at our
own will, and it is unreasonable, too, to measure it by length of
time. Perhaps those months which we have left to live are more
important than all the years lived before, and we must live them
well."

      *       *       *       *

And from the touching interest which Leo Nikolaevitch displayed after
he went away in everything relating to Sofya Andreyevna, questioning
everyone about her with the greatest emotion and solicitude, it was
perfectly clear that, though he recognised before his conscience that
to live together with her any longer was impossible, yet in his soul
he was fully reconciled with her.


FOOTNOTES

[22] I permit myself to quote this letter without asking
Alexandra Lvovna's permission to do so, because it has already,
without our previous knowledge, appeared in print in the historical
journal, _Facts and Days_ (Petrograd, 1920), and because it makes a
less one-sided impression in connection with the other contents of
the present book.

[23] "Letters of Count L. N. Tolstoy to his wife, 1862-1910"
(Kushnerev & Co., 1915).

[24] The words "sufferings such as we have endured in the
past" have been left out of Tolstoy's letters by Sofya Andreyevna
without any indication of an omission.




CHAPTER IX

THE MOTIVES THAT DECIDED HIS GOING AWAY


For us, the nearest friends of Leo Nikolaevitch, who watched step by
step what was taking place at Yasnaya Polyana during the last days of
his presence there, the reason why he could do nothing but go away
was easy to understand. But the reader who is not so closely
acquainted with all the circumstances may ask, Why exactly did Sofya
Andreyevna's behaviour on the last night have such an influence on
Leo Nikolaevitch? What did she do then that was new and not to be
expected from her previous behaviour?

Of course Sofya Andreyevna's behaviour on that night only gave the
final impetus to Leo Nikolaevitch's going away. In reality the
question of leaving home had already been decided in his soul, and,
as it seems to me, he was, as it were, instinctively only awaiting
the inevitable final impulse for carrying out his intention. And the
key to the understanding of Leo Nikolaevitch's spiritual state at the
time is hidden in the words with which he concluded the note in his
diary concerning his departure: "I feel that I have saved myself, not
as Leo Nikolaevitch, but have saved what at times at least to some
small degree there is in me." These words are marvellous in their
touching humility on the lips of a man whose soul was filled to
overflowing and was the reflection of the highest principle, and at
the same time remarkable from the light which they throw on the
deeper motives of his departure. In these words one is conscious of
the dread--under the conditions beginning to exist about him--of
being deprived of the spiritual independence essential for the
preservation of the inviolability of his "holy of holies"--the dread
of being deprived of the possibility of resisting the ever-persisting
attacks from outside--which might very naturally come to pass,
considering Leo Nikolaevitch's extreme age and the gradual weakening
of his physical powers.

It must not be forgotten also that by this time he had become
convinced of the complete uselessness, even undesirability, of his
remaining longer with Sofya Andreyevna, and that therefore the
various impulses to go away which he had before so scrupulously
repressed in his soul were now set free. The painful consciousness of
luxury and privilege in which his life was spent in the midst of the
poverty around him, the yearning for peace and solitude before death,
and many other causes began without hindrance to impel him in the
same direction.

Thus the cup was already full and only the last drop was lacking. And
just at this time suddenly the new element in his wife's behaviour
which provided that last impulse to departure was revealed to Leo
Nikolaevitch.

What was new to him was the sudden revelation of the atmosphere of
lying and hypocrisy in which he saw himself entangled. He
unexpectedly became the involuntary witness of how Sofya Andreyevna,
when she thought he was asleep, secretly stole up to his papers, and
of how, as soon as she found out that he was not asleep, she began
again at once as though nothing were the matter, expressing
solicitude for his health. His eyes were at once opened and he saw
what had long been well known to his intimate friends, but what the
remnant of confidence in and respect for his wife which were still
preserved in his soul, forbade him even to admit in his thoughts:
that is, that _she was acting a farce with him_.

Together with this discovery everything was transformed for Leo
Nikolaevitch, and indeed that was inevitable. It was of little moment
that the incident which opened his eyes may seem in itself not to be
of much importance. For married people who have lived together fifty
years the first incident which reveals hypocrisy in one of them is
always of importance. This incident at once threw quite a new light
for Leo Nikolaevitch on all that had passed between him and Sofya
Andreyevna. Till that time he had supposed that he had to do with
sincere egoism and ill-will, with open wilfulness and innate
coarseness and with morbid abnormality. And meeting this with
unvarying mildness, patience and love, he recognised that he was
doing as he ought, and therefore felt an inner satisfaction. Now all
this was turned upside down. In the past the position had been clear;
before him was a definite evil which laid on him as definite a duty
to meet the evil with good. Now he had to do with a sort of tangle in
which there was so much falsity that it was impossible to make out
where reality ended and deception began; so that instead of his
former satisfaction Leo Nikolaevitch suddenly felt the ambiguous
position in which he found himself. So at least I explain to myself
the extreme emotion which Leo Nikolaevitch felt at his final decision
to go away.

It is true that even before this he knew of Sofya Andreyevna's
insincere behaviour. A month before he went away he wrote of Sofya
Andreyevna in this diary: "I cannot get accustomed to regarding her
words as the ravings of delirium. All my trouble comes from that. It
is impossible to talk to her, because she does not recognise the
obligation of truth nor of logic, nor of her own words, nor of
conscience. It is awful. I am not speaking now of love for me, of
which there is no trace. She does not want my love for her either;
all she wants is that people should think that I love her, and that
is so awful." (_Diary, September 10, 1910._) Yet apparently Leo
Nikolaevitch still had no idea of the degree of insincerity and
deception of which Sofya Andreyevna was capable in her relations with
him personally. But on that night he was involuntarily brought face
to face with the manifestation of it, and he was the more revolted
because he had hitherto so scrupulously striven in his soul to
preserve some sort of trust in his wife.

Finally, convinced that he was incapable of changing the spiritual
condition of Sofya Andreyevna, he saw now that his presence at her
side could only serve as a cause of offence for her, exciting the
worst side of her nature. And so the former obstacles to his
departure were removed from him, and his soul demanded release from
the unbefitting position in which he found himself.

It is easy to understand that under such conditions the first serious
occasion was sufficient to impel him to carry out his long-cherished
intention, and he went away.[25]


FOOTNOTE

[25] I have heard--it is true, from very few persons, and
those chiefly belonging to Leo Nikolaevitch's family--regret
expressed that he did not die peaceably at Yasnaya Polyana in the
midst of his family. The picture imagined by these people of the
death-bed of Leo Nikolaevitch in the home of his ancestors,
surrounded by all his family, and giving his blessing to his
grief-stricken wife, may perhaps be very touching. But such a scene
would in reality be impossible, since Sofya Andreyevna was in such a
condition of mind that, apart from a simulated exaggeration of
feeling and the basest preoccupation with the material heritage,
nothing more would have happened than on previous occasions when Leo
Nikolaevitch was taken with the attacks and fainting fits to which he
was liable, and it would have been painful for him. We ought, on the
contrary, to rejoice that circumstances gave Leo Nikolaevitch the
chance of spending the last days of his life and the last hours of
his consciousness in a quiet, genuine atmosphere, among intimate
friends who truly loved and understood him, and who strenuously
watched over his spiritual peace and did not pester him in those last
minutes with any worldly cares or material considerations. In this I
cannot but see an immense happiness and blessing for Leo
Nikolaevitch.

Some people lay stress on the spiritual pain which Sofya Andreyevna
must have experienced when she learned that Leo Nikolaevitch had left
her. There is no doubt that this pain must have been very severe,
particularly at first. But one must not blame others for the
sufferings which are the work of the sufferer himself. If my own
negligence is the cause of a man slipping off the roof and falling on
my head I cannot blame him for the bruises he has caused me by his
fall. It is as unjust to blame Leo Nikolaevitch for the suffering
caused to Sofya Andreyevna by his departure, which was provoked by
herself. Moreover, sufferings which are the result of our own
mistakes are often beneficial. So in this instance, if Sofya
Andreyevna, toward the end of the life of Leo Nikolaevitch, ever
displayed the faintest gleams of consciousness of the great wrong she
had done him, it was only at the time of her heaviest suffering on
account of his leaving her. And therefore one may regret the causes
which called forth Leo Nikolaevitch's departure, but not that the
emotional shock given Sofya Andreyevna by it opened her eyes, if only
for a few instants, to the true significance of her behaviour to her
husband.

If it should seem strange to anyone that Leo Nikolaevitch, even after
he had left home, so dreaded an interview with Sofya Andreyevna, that
is only because the mental condition in which, as Leo Nikolaevitch
well knew, she was at that time is too little known. When he left
Yasnaya Polyana Leo Nikolaevitch firmly and unhesitatingly decided to
cut himself off from his family, and therefore while he was still
hoping to live independently, he naturally avoided interviews with
Sofya Andreyevna, who would with all her energies, and without
scruple as to the means employed, have hindered his realising his
plan. When he was laid up at Astapavo and foresaw the possibility of
death being at hand, it was just as natural that he should have felt
the need of that spiritual tranquillity to which every dying man has
a right. And that Sofya Andreyevna's condition at that time really
was such that she could have brought nothing to his death-bed but
deception, vanity, material importunities, fuss and noise, that is
well known by all who have had the opportunity of watching at close
quarters her behaviour not only in all Leo Nikolaevitch's serious
illnesses in later years and during the last months of his life at
Yasnaya Polyana, but also during the first days after he had gone
away, and during her stay in his neighbourhood at Astapovo, and by
his bedside during the last unconscious moments, and during the first
hours after his death. Anyone who saw Sofya Andreyevna under all
these conditions cannot but acknowledge that Leo Nikolaevitch showed
great foresight in so persistently avoiding interviews with her while
she was in that condition. A personal interview between them at that
time could not only add nothing to what he had told her in his last
letters, which were permeated with forgiveness, pity and love, but,
judging from the mental condition in which Sofya Andreyevna still
was, it could only have evoked in her a renewal too painful for him
of the same insincerity, hypocrisy and importunities which had
provoked his departure.




CHAPTER X

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF TOLSTOY'S GOING AWAY AND OF THE WHOLE SPIRITUAL
ACHIEVEMENT OF HIS LIFE


In an indirect way Leo Nikolaevitch's going away performed a great
service in a social sense by manifesting clearly that his living
beforehand for so long with his family was not due to the comforts of
a rich man's life, nor to his weakness and lack of will where his
wife was concerned. If circumstances had so fallen out that he had
not left his family up to the day of his death, the value of the
great example of his life would not, of course, have been one jot
less in reality. But it would have been hard for many to believe that
there was not a considerable share of egoism or weakness of character
in his living with his wife in the surroundings in which his family
lived. His departure from it revealed openly to contemporary and
future generations that his life in Yasnaya Polyana really was
surrounded by the most painful conditions. This event at once threw
the true light on all that he must have suffered before that in his
home surroundings, which many had been disposed to regard as peaceful
and agreeable for him. Now it had become evident to all that Leo
Nikolaevitch had remained with his family at Yasnaya Polyana for
nearly thirty years after the whole manner of life had become
distasteful and oppressive in the extreme for him,--and that he
remained not at all because he wanted to enjoy the comfort of a
wealthy landowner's life, nor because he was weak and wanting in will
where his wife was concerned. Now it is easy to understand that
during the whole of that time he was consciously sacrificing his
preferences and inclinations for the sake of doing what he regarded
as his duty to God and his family. And such an example of
self-sacrifice and consistency on the part of such a man as Tolstoy
doubtless has a conspicuous social value.

Many of the most various opinions have been expressed as to whether
Tolstoy was right in leaving his family. To the friends of Leo
Nikolaevitch who respected his soul and recognise the freedom of
conscience and independence of human personality in all, the question
in regard to Leo Nikolaevitch's going away is not whether he was
right or wrong in taking that step. A man is really answerable not
to the conscience of another, but only to his own. It is enough for
us that it was not with a light heart that Leo Nikolaevitch came to
his final decision to leave his wife. Once more I repeat that since
he restrained himself for thirty years from going away, during the
whole of that period patiently bearing the most poignant spiritual
sufferings which often brought him to the verge of the grave,--and in
the end he did die indeed from not having gone away sooner,--then
surely we might do homage to the undoubted purity of his motives, and
recognise that he had the right to decide the question in the end not
in accordance with our views, but in accordance with his own
judgment.

I at least for my part--carefully calling up before my imagination
all that I heard with my own ears from Leo Nikolaevitch himself, and
what I saw with my own eyes, amplifying this with what he wrote in
his diary and said in various writings and intimate letters, and
finally collating all this with contemporary communications, diaries
and notes of most intimate friends who were, just as I was, witnesses
of the great drama of the last months of his life--I do not see the
possibility even from the most critical standpoint of seeing the
slightest inconsistency in the fact that Leo Nikolaevitch remained so
long with his wife and then thought it necessary to leave her. In
this as in all else one can follow the inevitable, fully consistent
and independent reaction of his inner life to external circumstances
as they gradually opened out before him and suddenly took definite
shape towards the end.

In all Leo Nikolaevitch's impulses and actions after the religious
revolution which took place in him in the 'eighties, the same
fundamental and guiding principle is all the time conspicuous; that
is, the perpetual effort which persisted to the day of his death, to
do not his own will nor the will of those surrounding him, but the
will of God as he interpreted it according to his best understanding.
What more can we expect of a man?

If some or other of Leo Nikolaevitch's actions during the last months
of his life were not to the taste of some of his family, such, for
instance, as his depriving them of the inheritance of his literary
rights, his making a will without their knowledge and participation,
his leaving his manuscripts and diaries to other people, and lastly
his departing from amongst them; and if the material loss or their
wounded vanity leads them mistakenly to ascribe all this to the
supposed mental enfeeblement, the weakness of old age, and the fatal
influence on him of the circle of his "followers," at least there is
no necessity for people who are in no way personally affected to
follow the example of those of Leo Nikolaevitch's family who consider
themselves injured and repeat their unfair charges, which come in
reality to this, that Leo Nikolaevitch at the end of his life was in
his dotage and did a whole series of bad and stupid things. Some of
Leo Nikolaevitch's family wrongly imagined that since he had remained
with his family so long he had lost all freedom of choice, and ought
not to have moved from the spot until his death, like a thing laid on
a shelf which cannot move of its own initiative. Leo Nikolaevitch was
not only a living man, but a man of exceptionally strong and active
inner life, which was continually growing and developing and spurring
him on to new external manifestations which were often a surprise to
those who watched him. On all the important occasions of his life he
always acted without following any programme imposed on him from
outside, or being affected by any personal influence; he was
independently guided only by the prompting of his inner consciousness
and entirely free from pose or any striving after effect. But at the
same time he never drew back before the most extreme decisions when
it was a question of obeying the dictates of his conscience. And so
he had continually to do what was not foreseen or understood by
others, and often not approved even by the majority of those about
him.

At one time people were enthusiastic over Tolstoy's creative genius,
and thought that he would do nothing all his life but write novels
for them. He brooded over the meaning of life, devoted himself to the
service of God, and began to point out to men how godlessly they
lived. Then they, struck by his inspired indictment of social life,
expected that he would abandon his family and go about the world
preaching like a prophet. But, manifesting love first of all to those
nearest to him, and despising the censure of men, he remained almost
thirty years with his wife and children under conditions most
distressing for himself, hoping to be at least some little help in
bringing them to a reasonable life. People became accustomed to the
thought that old Tolstoy, physically weakened and professing the
doctrine of non-resistance, would end his life at Yasnaya Polyana.
But becoming convinced that being by his wife's side had in the end
only become a stumbling-block to her and a restriction on his own
spiritual life, to the surprise of all he left Yasnaya Polyana, at
eighty-two, with shattered health, in order to live amidst poor
surroundings, near to the working people so dear to his heart.

With Tolstoy everything was original and unexpected. The setting of
his end was bound to be the same. Under the circumstances in which he
was placed, and with the marvellously delicate sensitiveness and
responsiveness to impressions which distinguished his exceptional
nature, nothing else could or should have happened than just what did
happen. There happened just what was in harmony with the external
circumstances and the inner spiritual characteristics of Leo
Nikolaevitch Tolstoy and no other. Any other solution of his domestic
relations, any other surroundings of his death, even though in
harmony with a certain traditional pattern, would have been false and
artificial. Leo Nikolaevitch went away and died without affected
sentimentality and emotional phrases, without loud words and
eloquent gestures; he went away and died as he had lived,
truthfully, sincerely and simply; and a better, truthful, more
befitting end to his life could not be imagined, for just that end
was the natural and inevitable one.

As time erases all the personal element which has hitherto played so
great a part in the criticisms of Leo Nikolaevitch, all the purity of
his impulses and deep wisdom of his decisions in the most complicated
and difficult circumstances which could fall to the lot of man will
stand out before the eyes of men in all their force. And then his
life, especially its second period, from his spiritual awakening to
his death, will serve as a bright and an increasing example of how we
ought and can, guided by the voice of God in our souls, combine in
our actions the greatest warmth of heart and gentleness toward those
who injure us with an unalterable firmness where fidelity to that
higher principle which one serves is concerned.

  _Telyatniki,
    May 15th, 1913._
      _Moscow, 1920._




PART III

TOLSTOY'S ATTITUDE TO HIS SUFFERINGS


I think that to complete what has been said here about Tolstoy's
"going away" it would be desirable to look rather more attentively at
the growth of Leo Nikolaevitch's inner consciousness in the course of
the last decades of his life, and at that side of the development of
his spiritual life which is connected with his attitude to suffering,
in particular to his own sufferings arising from the conditions of
his family life which have been examined in the present book.

Let us listen first of all to Leo Nikolaevitch's own words in regard
to the thoughts and feelings he had to pass through in this
connection. For this purpose we make use of his diary and private
letters. Much precious material on this subject is contained in his
diary for 1884, which he personally handed to me to take care of
immediately after it was finished, and from which I will make the
following extracts. This diary was kept by Leo Nikolaevitch just at
that time when the great drama of his family life, which in the end
brought him to the tomb, was taking shape. I venture to give
publicity to the lines quoted below, written by Leo Nikolaevitch in
the most difficult moments of his life, solely for the sake of
removing those misunderstandings and false deductions which, as I
have indicated before, have accumulated in such numbers since his
death around the question of his "going away." I hope that the reader
will understand my motives and will approach these private notes of
Leo Nikolaevitch with the same feeling of reverence with which I
reproduce them here.

From the Diary of L. N. Tolstoy of 1884.

_April 16._--It is very painful at home, painful that I cannot
sympathise with them. All their joys, examinations, successes in
society, music, furniture, shopping, I look upon all of it as a
misfortune and evil for them and cannot say that to them. I can and I
do say it, but my words do not take hold of anyone. It seems as
though they know not the meaning of my words, but that I have a bad
habit of saying them. At weak moments--this is one now--I wonder at
their heartlessness. How is it they do not see that, not to speak of
suffering, I have had no life at all for these three years? I am
given the part of a peevish old man and I cannot get out of it in
their eyes. If I take part in their life I am false to the truth, and
they will be the first to throw that in my face. If I look mournfully
now upon their madness, I am a peevish old man like all old men.

_April 23._--Shameful, disgusting. Terrible depression. I am all
filled with weakness. I must as in a dream be on my guard so as not
to spoil in the dream that which is needed for real life. I am drawn
and drawn into the mire, and useless are my shudders. If only I am
not drawn in without a protest! There has been no spite, little
vanity, or none at all, but of weakness, mortal weakness, these days
are full. Longing for real death. There is no despair. But I would
like to live and not to be on guard on one's life.

_April 24._--The same weakness and the same victorious mire sucking
one in, drawing one down.

_April 26._--Must be happy in an unhappy life, must ... make this the
object of my life. And I can do it when I am strong in the spirit.

_May 15._--I am miserable. I am an insignificant, useless creature,
and am absorbed in myself besides. The one good thing is that I want
to die.

_May 16._--O Lord, save me from the hateful life which is crushing
and destroying me. The one good thing is, I long to die. Better to
die than live like this.

_May 17._--I dreamed that my wife loved me. How light my heart was,
everything grew bright. Nothing like it in reality. And that is
destroying my life.... At home still the same general death. Only the
little children are alive. A wearisome conversation at tea again. All
one's life in terror.

_May 26._--I am as in a dream ... when I know that a tiger is coming,
and in a minute....

_June 1._--Dullness, deadness of soul--that one could bear, but with
it insolence, self-confidence ... one must know how to bear that too,
if not with love, with pity. I am irritable, gloomy all day. I am
bad.... How to live here, how to break through pouring sand. I will
try.

_June 2._--Conversation at tea with my wife. Angry again. Tried to
write, it wouldn't go.... How be a shining light when I am still
full of weakness which I have not the strength to overcome?

_June 4._--Thought a great deal about my wife. I must love her and
not be angry with her, must make her love me; so I will do.

_June 6._--After dinner misery ... in the evening revived a little.
Could not be loving as I would. I am very bad.

_June 7._--I am trying to be bright and happy, but it is very, very
hard. Everything I do is wrong, and I suffer horribly from this
wrongness. It is as though I alone were not mad in the house of the
mad managed by the mad.

_June 9._--Agonising struggle, and I do not control myself. I look
for the reasons--tobacco, incontinence, absence of imaginative work.
It is all nonsense. The only cause is the absence of a loved and
loving wife. It began from that time fourteen years ago when the cord
snapped and I realised my loneliness.[26] All that is not a reason.
I must find a wife in her. I ought, and I can and I will: Lord, help
me.

_June 10._--It is awful that the luxury, the corruption of life in
which I live I have myself created, and I am myself corrupted and I
cannot reform it. I can say that I shall reform myself, but so
slowly. I cannot give up smoking, and I cannot find a way of treating
my wife so as not to hurt her feelings and not to give in to her. I
am seeking it, I am trying.

_June 16._[27]--It was very painful, longed to go away at once. All
that is weakness. Not for men's sake but for God's. Do as one knows
best for oneself and not in order to prove something. But it is
awfully painful. Of course I am to blame if it hurts me. I struggle,
I put out the rising fire, but I feel that it has violently bent the
scales. And indeed what use am I to them, what use are all my
sufferings? And however hard (though they are easy) the conditions of
a vagrant's life, there can be nothing in it like this heartache!

_June 23._--I am calmer, stronger in spirit. In the evening a cruel
conversation about the Samara revenues.[28] I am trying to act as
though in the presence of God, and I cannot avoid anger. This must
end.

_July 6._--I was reading over the diary of those days when I was
seeking the cause of temptation. All nonsense--it is the absence of
hard physical labour.[29] I do not sufficiently prize the happiness
of freedom from temptation after work. That happiness is cheaply
bought at the price of fatigue and aching muscles.

_July 5_ (isn't it the 8th?).--My wife is very serene and contented
and does not see the gulf between us. I try to do what I ought, but
what I ought I do not know. I must do as I ought every minute, and
everything will turn out as it should.

_July 19._--She came in to me and began a hysterical scene--the
upshot of which is that nothing can be changed and she is unhappy and
wants to run away somewhere. I was sorry for her, but at the same
time I recognised that it was hopeless--to the day of my death she
will be a millstone round my neck and my children's. I suppose it
must be so. I must learn not to drown with a millstone round my neck.
But the children? It seems it must be, and it only hurts me because I
am short-sighted. I soothed her as though she were ill.

_August 8._--I thought; we reproach God, we complain that we meet
with obstacles in fulfilling the teaching of Christ. Well, but what
if we were all free from families who disagree with us? We should
come together and live happily and joyfully. But the others? The
others would not know. We want to gather all the light together that
it may burn better, but God has scattered the fire among the logs.
They are being kindled while we fret that they are not burning.

_August 12._--It is all right with my wife, but I am afraid and
straining every nerve.

_August 14._--Peace and friendliness with my wife, but I am afraid
every minute.

_August 20._--An outburst against me at dinner.... The sense of peace
and welfare had got hold of the family. Every one depressed ...
painful conversation in the house. Sonya, feeling that she was to
blame tried to justify herself by anger. I was sorry for her.

_August 21._--In the morning began a conversation, hotly too but
well. I said what ought to be said.... I came home. Sonya was
reconciled. How glad I was. Certainly if she would take to being good
she would be very good.

_September 3._--Something touches them somehow ... but I don't know
how.

_September 7._--Went looking for mushrooms ... my wife did not follow
me but went off by herself not knowing where, only not after me--that
is all our life.

_September 9._--It is pleasant being with my wife. Told her
unpleasant truths and she was not angry.

_September 10._--Sonya tidied my room and then shouted disgustingly
at Vlass. I am training myself to abstain from indignation and to see
in it a moral bump which one must recognise as a fact and face its
existence in one's action.

_September 15._--Went to look for mushrooms. Miserable.

_September 17._--Talk in the morning. And sudden fury. Then she came
to me and nagged until I was beside myself. I said nothing and did
nothing, but I was very unhappy. She ran away in hysterics, I ran
after her, horribly worried.

      *       *       *       *

After this diary of 1884 no diaries so far as I know were left by Leo
Nikolaevitch for several years. Did he cease to keep his diary that
he might not increase his spiritual sufferings by recording them on
paper, preferring to continue his intense struggle with himself in
complete solitude before no one but his God? Did he keep a diary and
afterwards himself destroy it, not wishing to reveal to anyone the
sufferings to which he was subjected? Were the missing diaries lost
in some other way, if indeed they ever existed? To these questions
there is no answer, and it is hardly likely there will be.

By Leo Nikolaevitch's notes in his later diaries kept from the year
1888, one thing is placed beyond doubt, that is, that his spiritual
sufferings and inward struggles in connection with his family
relations continued the whole of the rest of his life. And in this
struggle his higher consciousness became brighter and brighter, his
spiritual force grew and gained strength. As the years passed he
gained an amazing mastery of his personal desires and weaknesses. At
times, as indeed was inevitable, he recognised with peculiar pain his
complete loneliness in the midst of the people surrounding him. To
what degree he felt himself a stranger in his own family, how
completely he was deprived of that warm, genuine sympathy on the part
of his wife which is the most precious thing in married life, can to
some extent be judged by the notes in which, with irrepressible
grief, he recalls his mother.

His attitude to her memory, as is well known, was always the most
reverent. In his _Recollections of Childhood_ he writes of her: "It
was necessary for her to love not herself, and one love followed
another. Such is the spiritual figure of my mother in my imagination;
she stood before me as such a lofty, pure, spiritual being that often
in the middle period of my life, when I was struggling with
temptations which almost overwhelmed me, I prayed to her soul,
entreating her to help me, and this prayer was always a help to me."

Leo Nikolaevitch sometimes invoked the holy image of his mother in
his most difficult moments, even in his old age. In the beginning of
1900 he wrote on a scrap of paper, "Dull, miserable state the whole
day. Towards evening this mood passed into tenderness--a desire for
fondness, for love, longed as children do to press up to a loving,
pitying creature and to weep with emotion and to be comforted. But
what creature is there to whom I could come close like that? I go
over all the people I have loved; not one is suitable to whom I can
come close. If I could be little and snuggle up to my mother as I
imagine her to myself! Yes, yes, mother whom I called to when I could
not speak, yes, she, my highest imagination of pure love,--not cold,
divine love, but earthly, warm, motherly. It is to that that my
battered, weary soul is drawn. You, mother, you caress me. All this
is senseless, but it is all true."

On apparently the next day, calmly analysing the attack of misery he
had passed through the day before, he wrote in his diary: "Yesterday
particularly oppressed condition. Everything unpleasant felt with
peculiar vividness. So I say to myself, but in reality I seek what is
unpleasant; I am receptive, absorbent to what is unpleasant. I could
not get rid of this feeling anyhow. I have tried everything--prayer
and the sense of my own badness--and nothing succeeds. Prayer, that
is, vividly picturing my position does not reach to the depths of my
consciousness; the recognition of my worthlessness, paltriness does
not help. It is not that one wants something, but is miserably
dissatisfied one does not know with what. It seems it is with life,
one longs to die. Towards evening this condition passed into a
feeling of forlornness and an overwhelming desire of fondling, of
love; I, an old man, longed to be a baby, to snuggle up to a loving
creature, to be petted, to complain and to be fondled and comforted.
But who is the being to whom I could snuggle up and on whose arms I
could weep and complain? There is no one living. Then what is this?
Still the same devil of egoism which in such a new, cunning form is
trying to deceive and overpower me. This last feeling has explained
to me the state of misery which preceded it. It is only the
weakening, the temporary disappearance of spiritual life and the
assertion of the claims of egoism which on awakening finds no food
for itself and is miserable. The only means to use against it is to
serve someone in the simplest way that comes first, to work for
someone."--(_Diary, March 11, 1906._)

The complete absence in Leo Nikolaevitch of the slightest
sentimentality in regard to the spiritual sufferings which he had to
endure was apparently connected with his lofty conception of Christ
and the deep reverence he felt for his heroic life. In 1885 Leo
Nikolaevitch wrote: "Christ conquered the world and saved it not by
suffering for us, but by suffering with love and joy, _i.e._ by
conquering suffering, and he taught us thereby."

And indeed to the very last days and hours of his life Leo
Nikolaevitch persistently and with striking success strove to train
himself to "conquer suffering." In confirmation of my words I quote a
series of further extracts from his diaries and letters.

_June 15, 1889_ (from a diary).--"I am burdened by life, I forget
that if one has vital forces they can be used for the service of God,
and that there is no getting away, there is no emptiness, everywhere
there is contact, and in contact there is life."

_July 18, 1889_ (from the letters).--"What do I want? To live with
God, according to His will, with Him. What is wanted for that? One
thing only is wanted: to preserve the talent given to me, my soul,
given to me not only to preserve but to make it grow. How make it
grow? I know for myself what is needed; to keep what is animal in me
in purity, what is human in humility, and what is divine in love.
What is wanted for preserving purity? Privations, privations of every
sort. Humility? humiliation. Love? the hostility of men. Where and
how am I to keep my purity without privations, my humility without
humiliation, and my love without hostility? 'And if you love those
that love you, that is not love, but love ye your enemies, love ye
those that hate you.' One sorrow approaches humiliation and
hostility, and these thoughts have revived me. Another sorrow is
privation, suffering--the very thing that is needed for the growth of
the soul. That is how one must look at it."

_July 18, 1889_ (from the letters).--All our sorrows have one root,
and, strange as it sounds, they all not only can, but ought, to be a
blessing.... God grant that we may believe in the possibility of
it--that is one thing; and the other is that we may not return in
thought to our sorrow, in our imagination changing the conditions in
which our sorrow has occurred and correcting our actions. "If we had
done this or that this would not have happened." God preserve us
from this mistake, with its painful consequences. What has been is,
and what is was bound to have been, and all our vital force ought to
be directed to the present, to bearing our cross in the best way
possible.

_December, 1889_ (from the letters).--The cross is given according to
the strength.... I believe that, and cannot but believe it, because I
know by experience that the harder my sufferings have been, if only I
have succeeded in taking them in a Christian spirit ... the fuller,
more vivid, more joyful and full of meaning life has become. It is so
often insincerely repeated that sufferings are good for us and are
sent by God, that we have ceased to believe it, and yet it is the
simplest, clearest and most indubitable truth. Suffering--what is
called suffering--is the condition of spiritual growth. Without
suffering growth is impossible, the widening of life is impossible.
For this reason sufferings also always accompany death. If a man had
no suffering he would be in a bad way; that is why they say among the
people that those whom God loves He visits by misfortunes. I
understand that a man may be sad and apprehensive when misfortunes
have not visited him for a long time. There is no movement, no growth
of life. Suffering is only suffering for the heathen, for the man
who has not the light of the truth, and for us in the measure in
which we have not the light; but sufferings cease to be such for the
Christian--they become birth-pangs, even as Christ promised to
deliver us from evil. And all this is not rhetoric, but is for me as
undoubtedly in accordance with reason and experience as that it is
now winter.

1892-3 (from the letters).--Nothing, I imagine, sets a man free from
dependence on others and brings him near, or rather may bring him
near, to God so much as your position. One only leans upon Him when
men compel one to. God help you to bear your cross patiently,
submissively, so as to get from it all the good which external
suffering gives and can give. Or it will be mortifying that there has
been suffering, but struggling with it, indignant and despairing, you
did not get from it all that it is capable of giving.

_May 17, 1893_ (from the letters).--I am forced to live without
personal, legitimate joys such as you have: labour, associations with
animals, nature; without association (not poisoned by their
corruption) with children; without the encouragement of public
opinion. What has happened to me is not exactly that the praise of
men has destroyed for me the attractiveness of their praise, but
their praise has been tainted, has become poisoned. I cannot now
desire the praise of men, fame among the crowd, because I have it and
know how double-faced it is; if there are some who praise, there are
others who revile; that praise of men which you have, the good
opinion of estimable men for a good life, at least consistent with
your convictions I cannot have. And on the top of all that this
praise of men--the way they write abroad and the opinion is current,
that I lead a modest, laborious life in poverty--that praise arraigns
me every second as a liar, a scoundrel living in luxury, making money
out of the sale of his books. If I think of the praise of men it is
like a thief who is every minute afraid that he will be caught, so
that I have not only to live without the stimulus of lawful joys, and
not only without the praise of men, but even with the perpetual
consciousness of the shamefulness of life; I have to live by that
which I consider men can and ought to live by; that is, by the
consciousness of fulfilling the will of Him who sent us. And I see
that I am still far from being ready for that, and am still only
learning, and life is teaching me. And I ought to rejoice, and I do
rejoice.

_February 28, 1894_ (from the letters).--The longer I live and the
nearer I am to death, the more certain to me is the injustice of our
wealthy mode of life, and I cannot help suffering by it.

_March 27, 1895_ (from a diary).--If there is suffering there has
been and is egoism. Love does not know suffering, because the loving
life is the divine life which can do all. Egoism is the limitation of
personality.

_December 20, 1896_ (from a diary).--Everything just as painful. Help
me, O Father. Comfort me. Be strong in me, subdue me, drive out and
destroy the unclean flesh and all that I feel through it. It is
better now though. Particularly soothing is the problem--the trial of
meekness, of humiliation, of quite unexpected humiliation. In
fetters, in prison one may be proud of humiliation, but in this case
it is merely painful, unless one takes it as a trial sent from God.
Yes, I will learn to bear it calmly, joyfully and to love.

_January 18, 1897_ (from a diary).--Depressing, disgusting.
Everything repels me in the life they are living around me.
Alternately I get free from misery and suffering and fall into it
again. Nothing shows so clearly how far I am from what I want to be.
If my life really were spent wholly in the service of God nothing
could trouble it.

_April 4, 1907_ (from a diary).--I have not lost my calm though my
soul is agitated, but I am mastering it. O God! if one could but
remember that one is His messenger, that the divinity ought to shine
through one! But what is hard is that if one only remembers this, one
will not live, and yet one must live, live energetically and
remember. Help me O Father. I have prayed a great deal of late that
life might be better, for I am ashamed and cast down by the
consciousness of the unrighteousness of my life.

_July 12, 1897_ (from the letters).--I understand your trouble and
sympathise with all my heart. It is your examination, try not to fail
in it. Remember that it is the one chance of applying your faith to
life. I always strengthen myself with that in difficult moments, and
sometimes with success.

1897 (from the letters).--The doubts as to whether one makes
concessions for the sake of not destroying love or for the sake of
indulging in one's own weaknesses persist as ever, and the older I
get, the more strongly I feel this sin, and I humble myself, but I do
not submit, and I hope to rise up again.

_March 10, 1899_ (from the letters).--It is very difficult and dreary
and lonely for me and I am afraid of unpleasantness--of people being
angry with me, and people are angry with me.

_November 29, 1901_ (from a diary).--If you are suffering it is only
from your not seeing everything (the time has not yet come). What is
accomplished by those sufferings has not been revealed.

_January 31, 1903_ (from the letters).--Sufferings are profitable
just because a man in ordinary worldly life forgets the unbreakable
bond which exists between all living creatures; the sufferings which
he endures and of which he has been the cause to other people remind
him of that bond. This bond is spiritual, seeing that the Son of God
is one in all men; physical sufferings drive a man involuntarily into
the spiritual sphere in which he feels in union with God and with the
world, and in which he ... bears the sufferings caused by others as
though caused by himself, and even joyfully takes upon himself the
burden of suffering, taking it from others. In that is the profit and
fruitfulness of suffering.

_June 12, 1905_ (from a diary).--More and more I am pained by my
abundance and the want surrounding me.

_May 29, 1906_ (from a diary).--I am very heavy-hearted with shame at
my life, and what to do I don't know: Lord, help me.

_November 23, 1906_ (from a diary).--In a very good spiritual state
of love for all. Read the Epistle of St. John. Marvellous, only now I
understand it fully. To-day there was a great temptation which I did
not fully conquer. Abakumov overtook me with a petition and a
complaint at having been sentenced to prison on account of the oak
trees. It was very painful. He cannot understand that I, the husband,
cannot do as I like, and looks on me as an evil-doer and a Pharisee
hiding behind my wife. I had not the strength to bear it lovingly,
said that I could not go on living here. And that was wrong.
Altogether I am more and more abused on all hands; that's a good
thing, it drives me to God--if I could only remain there. Altogether
I am conscious of one of the greatest changes which has taken place
in me just now. I feel this from my serenity and joyfulness and the
good feeling (I dare not say love) for people.

_June 7, 1907_ (from a diary).--My former ailment has passed, but a
new one seems to be beginning. To-day I was very, very sad. I am
ashamed to confess it, but I cannot call up joy. My soul is calm and
grave, but not joyful. My sadness is chiefly due to the darkness in
which people live so persistently. The exasperation of the peasants,
our senseless luxury. Experienced the joy of being alone with God ...
sorrowful, sorrowful. Lord, help me, burn up the old fleshly man in
me. Yes, the one consolation, the one salvation is to live in
eternity and not in time.

_April 7, 1908_ (from the letters).--One thing I can say, that the
reasons which restrain me from changing my manner of life as you
advise me,--though not changing it, is a source of misery to me--the
reasons that hinder me have their origin in the same principles of
love, in the name of which the change is desirable both for you and
me. It is very probable that I do not know and am not capable, or
simply there are bad qualities in me which prevent me from doing what
you advise me. But what is to be done? With the utmost effort of my
mind and heart I cannot find the means, and I should only be thankful
to anyone who will point it out to me. I say this quite sincerely,
without any irony.

_May 20, 1908_ (from a diary).--My life is good in that I bear all
the burden of a wealthy life which I detest--the sight of others
labouring for me, the begging for help, the censure, the envy, the
hatred,--and I do not enjoy its advantages, even that of loving what
is done for me and helping those who ask.

_July 3, 1908_ (from a diary).--The day before yesterday I received a
letter full of upbraidings for my wealth and hypocrisy and
persecution of the peasants, and, to my shame, it hurt me. To-day I
have been sad and ashamed all day. Just now I went for a ride, and it
seemed so desirable, so joyful to go away like a beggar, thanking and
loving everyone. Yes, I am weak, I cannot perpetually live in my
spiritual self, and as soon as one does not live in it, everything
vexes one. One thing is good, that I am dissatisfied with myself and
ashamed, but I must not be proud of it.

_July 9, 1908_ (from a diary).--I have passed through very painful
feelings; thank God that I have passed through them. An innumerable
multitude of people, and all this would be joyful if it were not all
poisoned by the consciousness of the senselessness, sinfulness,
nastiness, luxury, servants, and poverty and overstrained intensity
of labour around. Without ceasing I suffer misery from it, and I
alone. I cannot help wishing for death, though I hope as far as I
can to make use of what is left.

_January 12, 1909_ (from a diary).--It grows more and more difficult.
I do not know how to thank God that, together with the growing
difficulty, the strength to endure it grows also. Together with the
burden there is also the strength, and there is incomparably more joy
from the consciousness of strength than pain from the burden. Yes,
for His yoke is easy and His burden is light.

_May 6, 1907_ (from the letters).--It is hard for you. God help you
to bear your trial without reproaches to others and without
infringement of love for them. It is always a great help to me, when
anything is difficult, to think and to remember that it is the
material--and necessary, good material--upon which I am called to
work, and not before men but before God.

_July 21, 1909_ (from a diary).--Last night Sonya has been weak and
irritable. I could not go to sleep till after two o'clock. I woke up
feeling weak, I was awakened. Sonya did not sleep all night. I went
to her. It was something insane. "Dushan poisoned her," etc. I am
tired and cannot stand it any more and feel quite ill. I feel I
cannot be loving and reasonable, absolutely cannot. At present I
want only to keep away and to take no part. There is nothing else I
can do, or else I have seriously thought of escaping. Now then, show
your Christianity. _C'est le moment ou jamais._ But I awfully want to
go away. I doubt if my presence here is of any use to anyone. Help
me, my God, teach me. There is only one thing I want--to do not my
will, but Thine. I write and ask myself: Is it true? Am I posing to
myself? Help me, help me, help me!

_July 22, 1909_ (from a diary).--Yesterday I did not eat anything and
did not sleep. As usual I felt very wretched. I am wretched now, but
my heart is melted. Yes--to love those that do us evil, you say; will
try it. I try, but badly. I think more and more of going away and
making a settlement about property.... I don't know what I shall do.
Help, help, help! This "help" means that I am weak, bad. It is a good
thing that I am at any rate conscious of this....

_July 26, 1909_ (from a diary).--After dinner I spoke of Sweden; she
became terribly, hysterically irritated. She wanted to poison herself
with morphia. I tore it out of her hands and threw it under the
stairs. I struggled. But when I went to bed and thought it over
calmly I decided not to go. I went and told her. She is pitiful; I am
truly sorry for her. But how instructive it is! I did nothing except
inwardly work at myself. And as soon as I started on my own self,
everything was solved. I have been ill all day....

_August 28, 1909_ (from a diary).--Dreadfully, dreadfully miserable
and oppressed; depression partly produced by letter from Berlin, in
reference to Sofya Andreyevna's letter and the article in the
_Petersburg News_, saying that Tolstoy is a deceiver and a hypocrite.
To my shame I did not rejoice at being reviled, but was hurt, and the
whole evening was agonisingly depressed. Go away? More and more often
the question presents itself.

_August 29, 1909_ (from a diary).--Painful feeling and desire (a bad
one?) to run away, and uncertainty what is my duty to God. In calm
moments, as now, I know that what is necessary above all is to do
nothing, to bear all, to remain in love.

_September 4, 1909_ (from a diary).--The false judgment of men about
me, the necessity for remaining in this position--however hard it all
is, I begin at times to understand its beneficial effect on my soul.

_November 15, 1909_ (from a diary).--The misery, almost despair, at
my idle life in senseless luxury, in the midst of men who are
overworked and deprived of the essentials, of the possibility of
satisfying their first needs, keeps growing more intense. It is
agonising to live like this, and I do not know how to help myself and
them. In weak moments I long to die. Help me, O Father, to do Thy
will up to the last minute. Meditation about myself which I am
learning, and to which I am giving myself up more and more of late,
has advanced me much, very much; but, as always, true progress in
goodness ... only reveals one's imperfection more and more.

_January 8, 1910_ (from the letters).--I live wrongly in wealth,
though myself I have nothing, but with those who live in wealth.

_January 8, 1910_ (from the letters).--If man grows weak he is weaker
than water. If he grows strong he is stronger than rock. What
strengthens me most in difficult moments is the sense that the very
thing that is worrying one is the material on which we are called to
work, and the material is the more precious the more difficult the
moments.

_March 19, 1910_ (from the letters).--In bad moments think that what
is happening to you is the material on which you are called to work.
To me at any rate this thought and the feeling evoked by it is a
great help.

_April 13, 1910_ (from a diary).--I woke at five and kept thinking
how to get out, what to do, and I don't know. I thought of
writing--and writing is loathsome while I remain in this life. Speak
to her? Go away? Change? By degrees ... it seems as though the last
is the only thing I shall and can do, and yet it is painful. Perhaps,
certainly, indeed that is good. Help me, Thou Who art in me, in
everything, and Who exists and Whom I implore and love. I am weeping
now as I love.

_April 14, 1910_ (from the letters).--You ask whether I like the life
in which I find myself. No, I don't like it. I don't like it because
I am living with my own people in luxury while there are poverty and
want around me, and I cannot get away from the luxury, and I cannot
help the poverty and want. For this I do not like my life. I like it
in that it is in my power to act, and that I can act, and that I do
act in the measure of my strength in accordance with the teaching of
Christ, to love God and my neighbour. To love God means to love the
perfection of goodness and to approach it as far as one can. To love
one's neighbour is to love all people alike as one's brothers and
sisters. It is this, and this alone, that I am striving for, and
since, little by little, however poorly, I am approaching it I do not
grieve, but only rejoice. You ask me too, if I rejoice, at what do I
rejoice, and what joy do I expect? I rejoice that I can carry out to
the measure of my strength the task set me by my Master; to work for
the setting up of that Kingdom of God to which we are all striving.

_June 4, 1910_ (from a diary).--I had a good ride; I came back and
found the Circassian who was taking Prokofy. I was horribly
distressed and thought of going away, and now at five in the morning
I don't look on that as impossible.

_July 2, 1910_ (from the letters).--All will be well if we do not
grow weak.... Very painful, but the better for that.

_July 16, 1910_ (from the letters).--I feel well ... a little weaker
than usual, but still well.... Why, really when I am calm I actually
feel that in all this there is more of good than bad, incomparably
more. It is absurd even to compare the little unpleasantnesses,
agitations, privations, and the sense of growing nearer to God.

_July 20, 1910_ (from the letters).--I am grateful to you for having
helped and helping me to bear the trial that I have deserved and that
is needful for my soul.... And please do help us both not to grow
weak and not to do anything of which we shall repent.

_July 29, 1910_ (from the letters).--We will each of us try to act as
we ought, and it will be all right. I am trying with all my might,
and I feel that that is the only thing that matters.

_July 31, 1910_ (from the letters).--If only we do not ourselves
spoil things all will be as it ought to be--that is, well.

_August 7, 1910_ (from the letters).--I am sorry for her, and she is
undoubtedly more to be pitied than I, so that it would be wrong of me
to increase her sufferings out of pity for myself. Though I am tired
I am really all right. Ever nearer and nearer comes the revelation of
the certainly blessed, fore-divined mystery, and getting near it
cannot but rejoice me.

_August 9, 1910_ (from the letters).--The nearer one is to death, or
anyway the more vividly one thinks of it (and thinking of it is
thinking of one's own true life which is independent of death), the
more important the one needful work of life becomes, and the clearer
it is that for the securing of that non-infringement of love with
anyone, I must not undertake anything, but only _do nothing_.

_August 14, 1910_, morning (from the letters).--I know that all this
present particularly morbid state may seem affected, intentionally
worked up (to some extent that is so), but the chief point is that it
is anyway illness, perfectly obvious illness, that deprives her of
will and self-control. If it is said that she is herself to blame for
this relaxation of her will, for giving in to her egoism, which began
long ago, the fault is of the past, of long ago. Now she is quite
irresponsible and one can feel for her nothing but pity, and it is
impossible, for me at any rate, utterly impossible, _contrecourir_
(to run counter to) her, and so unmistakably increase her sufferings.
I do not believe that the complete vindication of my decision opposed
to her wishes would be good for her, and if I did believe it I still
could not do that. Apart from the fact that I think that I ought to
act in this way, the point is that I know from experience that when I
insist, I am miserable, and when I give way I am not only
light-hearted, I am even joyful.... I have been ill for the last few
days, but to-day I am much better. And I am particularly glad of it
to-day, because there is anyway fewer chances of one's saying or
doing wrong when one is physically well.

_August 14, 1910_, evening (from the letters).--I agree that one
ought not to make promises to anyone, and especially to a person in
the state in which she is now, but I am bound now not by any promise,
but simply by pity, by compassion, which I have been feeling
particularly strongly to-day as I wrote to you. Her position is very
painful, no one can see it and not sympathise with it.

_August 20, 1910_; Kotchety. (From the letters.)--Without
exaggeration I can say that I recognise that what has happened was
inevitable, and therefore profitable for my soul. I think so at any
rate in my better moments.

_August 25, 1910_; Kotchety. (From the letters.)--Of myself I may say
that I am very well here, even my health, which was affected too by
agitation, is far better. I am trying to behave as justly and firmly
as possible in regard to Sofya Andreyevna, and it seems as though I
am more or less successful in my object of calming her.... I am often
terribly sorry for her. When one thinks what it must be for her
lying awake alone at nights, for she gets no sleep for the greater
part of the night, with a confused but painful consciousness that she
is not loved, but is burdensome to everyone except the children, one
cannot but pity her.

_August 28, 1910_; Kotchety. (From the letters.)--Do not think that
it is easy for me to advise the manly, serene and even joyful
endurance of suffering because I do not myself experience it. Do not
think that, because all men are liable to sufferings which may be
regarded as objectless torments, or as trials, the mild and religious
endurance of which may, strange as it sounds, be transmuted to a
greater spiritual blessing. We are all liable to these trials, and
often to much harder ones than those which you are enduring. May God
who lives in you help you to be conscious of yourself. And when there
is that consciousness there is no suffering and there is no death.

_August 30, 1910_; Kotchety. (From the letters.)--Sofya Andreyevna
went away from here yesterday, and took a very touching farewell of
me and Tanya and her husband, with evident sincerity begging
forgiveness of all with tears in her eyes. She is inexpressibly
pathetic. What will happen later I cannot imagine. "Do what you
ought before your conscience and God, and what will be will be," I
say to myself and try to act on it.

_September 9, 1910_; Kotchety. (From the letters.)--She was very much
irritated, not irritated (_ce n'est pas le mot_, that is not the
right word), but _morbidly_ agitated. I underline that word. She is
unhappy and cannot control herself. I have only just been talking to
her. She came thinking I should go away with her, but I have refused
without fixing the date of my going away, and that greatly distressed
her. What I shall do later I don't know. I shall try to bear my cross
day by day.

_September 16, 1910_ (from the letters).--I am still as before in a
middling condition physically, and spiritually I try to look upon my
painful or rather difficult relations with Sofya Andreyevna as a
trial which is good for me, and which it depends upon myself to turn
into a blessing, but I rarely succeed in this. One thing I can say:
not in my brain but with my sides, as the peasants say, I have come
to a clear understanding of the difference between resistance which
is returning evil for evil, and the resistance of not giving way in
those of one's actions which one recognises as one's duty to one's
conscience and to God. I will try.

_September 18, 1910_ (from the letters).--I understand now from
experience that all that we call suffering is for our good.

_October 6, 1910_ (from the letters).--She is ill and all the rest of
it, but it is impossible not to pity her and not to be indulgent to
her.

_October 17, 1910_ (from the letters).--Yesterday was a very serious
day. Others will describe the physical details to you, but I want to
give you my own account from the inside. I pity and pity her, and
rejoice that at times I love her without effort. It was so last night
when she came in penitent and began seeing about warming my room, and
in spite of her exhaustion and weakness pushed the shutters and
screened the windows, taking pains and trouble about my ... bodily
comfort. What's to be done if there are people for whom, and I
believe only for a time, the reality of spiritual life is
unattainable. Yesterday evening I was almost on the point of going
away to Kotchety, but now I am glad I did not go. To-day I feel
physically weak, but serene in spirit.

_October 26, 1910_ (from a diary).--It is very oppressive for me in
this house of lunatics.

_October 26, 1910_ (from the letters).--The third thing is not so
much a thought as a feeling, and a bad feeling--the desire to change
my position. I feel something unbefitting, rather shameful, in my
position. Sometimes I look upon it as I ought, as a blessing but
sometimes I struggle against it and am revolted....

_October 27, 1910_ (from a diary).--It seems _bad_ but is really
good; the oppressiveness of our relations keeps increasing.

_October 29, 1910_ (from the letters).--I am waiting to see what will
come of the family deliberation--I think, good. In any case, however,
my return to my former life has become still more difficult--almost
impossible, owing to the reproaches which will now be showered upon
me, and the still smaller share of kindness which will be shown me. I
cannot and will not enter into any sort of negotiations--what will be
will be--only to sin as little as possible.... I cannot boast of my
physical and spiritual condition, they are both weak and shattered. I
feel most of all sorry for her. If only that pity were quite free
from an admixture of _rancune_ (resentment), and that I cannot boast
of.

_October 29, 1910_; Optin Monastery. (From a diary.)--I have been
much depressed all day and physically weak.... As I came here I was
thinking all the time on the road, of the way out of my and her
position, and could not think of any way out of it, but yet there
will be one whether one likes it or not; it will come, and not be
what one foresees. Yes, think only of how to avoid sin, and let come
what will come. That is not my affair. I have taken up ... the
_Circle of Reading_, and, just now, reading Number Twenty-eight was
struck by the direct answer to my position: trial is what I need, it
is beneficial for me. I am going to bed at once. Help me, O Lord.

_November 3, 1910_; Station Astapovo. (From a diary; the last words
written by Leo Nikolaevitch in his diary.)--_Fais ce que doit
adv...._[30] And it is all for the best both for others and for me.

The extracts from the diary and letters of Tolstoy that have been
quoted, though far from exhausting all the material, show
sufficiently clearly what Leo Nikolaevitch had to endure in
connection with his family and domestic conditions in the course of
the last thirty years of his life. In it of course all aspects of his
spiritual growth are not touched upon, the whole course of his inner
development during that period is not explained. But what is revealed
to us in these extracts is sufficient to excite the warmest sympathy
for Leo Nikolaevitch in his great and prolonged ordeal, and to
inspire the deepest respect for his touching ability to blame himself
for everything, and always to strive not towards what he desired but
towards his duty. At the same time there is here revealed to us in
its general features the path by which he came to the conviction that
if we suffer spiritually we are ourselves to blame.

As is the case with everyone for whom the true meaning of life is
revealed, after Leo Nikolaevitch's inner awakening at the beginning
of the 'eighties, his spiritual consciousness could not, of course,
remain at the same point. And indeed from the fragments we have
quoted we see that up to the very last days of his life it was
growing and becoming more perfect, as he became more and more
penetrated with purity and strength.

Becoming convinced that in spite of all his sufferings he could not
draw his wife to take part in his efforts, Leo Nikolaevitch began to
experience the most agonising distress, which, as we see from his
diary of 1884, sometimes became so acute that he hardly had the
strength to endure it. He even had moments almost of despair and as
it were revolt against his fate, especially when he learned from
experience that his wife was too far away from him spiritually to be
his companion in the reorganisation of their lives. It was at such a
moment that there broke from him that agonising cry of a tortured
heart, that she would for ever remain a millstone round his neck and
his children's. But at the same time he tried to accept these
sufferings with meekness and submission as a trial laid upon him, and
to behave with love and patience to her who evoked them. So about the
same time, on one of those exceptionally rare occasions when in
conversation with me he permitted himself to touch on his relations
with his wife, he spoke approximately as follows:

"It is impossible to blame Sofya Andreyevna. It is not her fault that
she does not follow me. Why, what she clings to so obstinately now is
the very thing in which I trained her for many years. Apart from
that, in the early days of my awakening I was too irritable and
insisted on trying to convince her that I was right. In those days I
put my new conception of life before her in a form so repellent and
unacceptable to her that I quite put her off. And now I feel that
through my own fault she can never come to the truth by my way. That
door is closed for her. But, on the other hand, I notice with joy
that by ways peculiar to her alone, and quite incomprehensible to me,
she seems at times to be gradually moving in the same direction."

About the same time Leo Nikolaevitch wrote to me:

"'He who loves not his brother, he dwelleth in death.' I have
learned, but to my cost. I did not love, I had malice against my
neighbours, and I was dying and dead. I began to be afraid of death;
not afraid exactly, but bewildered before it. But love had but to
rise up and I rose up again. I had forgotten Christ's first precept,
'Be not wrathful.' So simple, so small and so immense! If there is
one man whom one does not love one is lost, one is dead. I have
learned that by experience."--(Letter, December 28, 1885.)

At that period of his life Leo Nikolaevitch wrote in his diary the
reflection which has already appeared in print concerning the
chloroform of love, which expresses with remarkable vividness his
recognition of the way we ought to help men who have gone astray: "At
first I thought, Can one point out to people their mistakes, their
sins, their faults, without hurting them? We have chloroform and
cocaine for physical pain, but not for the soul. I thought this, and
at once it came into my head, it is untrue--there is such a spiritual
chloroform. They perform the operation of amputating a leg or an arm
with chloroform, but they perform the operation of reforming a man
painfully, stifling the reform with pain, exciting the worse
disease--vindictiveness. But there is a spiritual chloroform, and it
has long been known,--always the same--love. And that is not all: in
physical disease one may do good by an operation without chloroform,
but the soul is such a sensitive creature that an operation performed
upon it without the chloroform of love is never anything but
injurious. Patients always know it and ask for chloroform, and know
that it ought to be used.... The sick man is in pain and he screams,
hides the sore spot and says, 'You won't heal me, you won't heal me,
and I don't want to be healed, I would rather get worse if you cannot
heal me without pain....' And he is right ... you cannot drag a man
straight out when he is tangled in a net--you will hurt him. You must
disentangle the netting gently and firmly first. This delay, this
disentangling, is the chloroform of love.... This I almost understood
before, now I quite understand and begin to feel it...."

(Tolstoy's diary, January 25, 1889. Cf. _Biography of L. N. Tolstoy_
by P. I. Biryukov, Vol. III. chap. iii.)

Striving to work out in himself a patient and loving attitude to the
erring, beginning with those who were nearest to him, Leo
Nikolaevitch from the earliest days of his domestic ordeal applied
all his spiritual forces to avoiding giving way to his spiritual
sufferings and throwing the blame for them either on people or on
external circumstances. And this consciousness was continually
strengthened and confirmed in him, helping him to bestow less and
less pity on himself and more and more pity on those at whose hands
he suffered. At first, as we have seen, such resignation to destiny
was attained only with the greatest spiritual effort; but gradually
he succeeded in conquering himself more and more by means of this
incessant struggle carried on for many years. Such, anyway, is, it
seems to me, the general deduction which may be drawn from his diary
and letters. This deduction is confirmed too by the immediate
impression which many of those to whose lot it fell to be in close
relations with Leo Nikolaevitch in his later years carried away from
personal intercourse with him. Even the expression of his face during
this last period often seemed lighted up with a peculiar spiritual
radiance. Such in its most general features is my conception of the
consistent growth of Leo Nikolaevitch's inner consciousness after his
spiritual awakening in so far as that growth is connected with his
domestic sufferings and going away from home. This conception has
been formed, on the one hand, on the basis of my personal intimacy
and my spiritual unity with Leo Nikolaevitch as well as my long,
intimate acquaintance with his family; and, on the other hand, on an
attentive study of all that Leo Nikolaevitch has at various times
expressed in his letters.

But the secret of another man's soul is too great and too intricate
for anyone to be able to assert with confidence that he has fully
grasped it even on any one side. And therefore while expressing here
my personal opinion so far as it can have significance for anyone, I
feel great satisfaction in the fact that I have been able to a
considerable extent to incorporate Leo Nikolaevitch's own words in
this book. And thus it will be possible for the reader to draw his
own conclusions; at least from those notes of Leo Nikolaevitch's
which I have here brought into connection with my argument, and to
correct for himself anything in which it may seem to him that I am
mistaken. I should like to conclude with two more thoughts of Leo
Nikolaevitch's which show his comprehension of the spiritual
significance of suffering.

"For a man living a spiritual life suffering is always an
encouragement to becoming more perfect and more enlightened, and
getting nearer to God. For such people suffering can always be
transformed into the business of life."--(_Circle of Reading._)

"The cross that is laid upon us is that at which we ought to work.
Our whole life is this work. If the cross is illness, then bear it
well, with submission; if it is injury at the hands of men, know how
to return good for evil; if it is humiliation, be meek; if it is
death, accept it with gratitude."--(_The Way of Life._)


FOOTNOTES

[26] To what precisely Leo Nikolaevitch ascribed his realisation
that in 1870 the "cord had snapped" in the relations between him
and his wife I am not in a position to state with certainty. I can
only say for the information of the reader that I heard from Leo
Nikolaevitch that their relations began to change for the worse
from the time when Sofya Andreyevna, contrary to his principles
and desire, refused to nurse her second daughter Marya Lvovna,
born 1870, and engaged a wet nurse for her who was taken away
from her own baby.

[27] It may interest the reader to know that on
June 18 Sofya Andreyevna gave birth to her youngest daughter,
Alexandra.--_Translator's note._

[28] At that period Leo Nikolaevitch's attitude of disapproval
of property was beginning to take definite shape. In consequence
he did not wish to make use of the revenues from his estate in
Samara, considering it unjust to make the peasants work for him
and his family. Even the income which his family received from
the Yasnaya Polyana estate and from the sale by Sofya Andreyevna of
his works he considered as unjust, though he did not yet see clearly
how he ought to act in the matter, considering his duties to his
family.

[29] Compare entry for June 7.

[30] An unfinished French proverb; translated in full it means,
"Do what you ought and let come what may."




APPENDIX I


In view of the fact that Leo Nikolaevitch's diaries and letters have
not yet been published in their entirety, I think it essential to
make a note in connection with the character of the extracts which I
have made from them in this book. These passages have been selected
with the special object of illustrating Leo Nikolaevitch's attitude
to suffering in general and to his own sufferings in particular.
Owing to this, their context is inevitably one-sided and cannot give
a general idea of his prevailing spiritual mood during the last
thirty years of his life. That general mood, in spite of the
conditions which oppressed Leo Nikolaevitch externally, was doubtless
one of joy in life, in accordance with the characteristics of his
nature, and filled with inner satisfaction, as all those who were in
close communication with him for any length of time during that
period can testify. And in this fact, _i.e._ in his preserving those
characteristics in spite of all the trials to which he was subjected
throughout that whole period, I see one of the most remarkable
aspects of his heroic endurance.

Indeed one has but for one moment to enter in spirit into his
position at that time to be truly amazed at what he succeeded in
attaining in his inner life. Love for freedom in general and for
personal independence was to an exceptional degree characteristic of
his powerful personality. The demands of creative work attracted him
to prolonged absences far from home in the midst of the most varied
natural scenery, and the most different strata of humanity. The
working of his mind after his spiritual awakening required the
closest association with working people. For the satisfaction of his
spiritual needs he required the possibility of receiving unhindered
in his house all and each of those with whom he would have liked to
hold intercourse, without any limitation or restriction, and
consequently to show hospitality, to seat at his table on occasions,
to put up for the night both the peasant of the district who had come
to pay him a visit, and the passing pilgrim weary from the road, and
the visitor who had come from afar seeking spiritual intercourse and
help.... And of all this so needful to Tolstoy as artist and thinker,
and above all as a man leading a spiritual life,--of all this he was
deprived, thanks to the egoism of his family and the class prejudices
ruling in his house, in which a woman's self-will was paramount.
Being completely indifferent to his spiritual needs and callous to
his sufferings, Sofya Andreyevna expected him in his old age, as in
the first period of their life, to be continually at her side in
spite of the spiritual change that had taken place in her husband,
and only rarely agreed to his being absent for short intervals, and
then with the greatest difficulty. Leo Nikolaevitch could not refuse
these demands of hers without destroying the very small share of
domestic peace without which his life in the home would have lost any
sort of meaning. And in spite of all the oppressiveness of these
domestic conditions, which defy description in words and, lasting as
they did over thirty years, for us ordinary people would have been
truly shattering, Leo Nikolaevitch, far from giving way to despair,
did not even complain of his fate. On the contrary, he blamed himself
for his sufferings, ascribing them to his own imperfection, and
making the utmost effort to perform his family duties as
irreproachably as possible. "I am all right, quite all right," he
often said and wrote to his friends. At times he even displayed a
childlike gaiety, and sometimes jested at the very circumstances
which caused him the most suffering.

This remarkable circumstance I explain solely by the fact that Leo
Nikolaevitch firmly made it his aim to do nothing but the will of
God. This, and only this, he set before him as his fundamental task,
and for the sake of carrying it out he consciously denied himself the
satisfaction of his personal needs and any self-gratification during
the whole of that second long period of his married life. And denying
himself all the so-called joys of life, he incidentally attained true
spiritual joy and peace, true blessedness.

The subject of Leo Nikolaevitch's inner life is, however, outside the
limits of our present investigation and I have referred to it only
that the reader might not receive a quite mistaken impression that
Leo Nikolaevitch was lacking in that courageous joy in life affecting
all around him, which, on the contrary, he possessed in the highest
degree.[31]


FOOTNOTE

[31] As I am touching upon the general mood of Leo Nikolaevitch's
spiritual life, I foresee that the extracts I have made from his
diaries and letters will in many readers arouse a feeling of regret
that they have hitherto not had the opportunity of reading this
precious material in its entirety. And therefore I think it needful
to state that the principal obstacles to the continuation of the
series of issues of Tolstoy's diaries, begun several years ago, and
to the systematic publication of all his writings, are now happily
overcome, and the first complete edition of all Tolstoy's works is
at the present time being zealously prepared for the press.




APPENDIX II


The personality of Leo Nikolaevitch's wife, Sofya Andreyevna, is
connected in the closest way with the account I have given of his
leaving home. I have consequently been compelled to touch upon her
relations with her husband. While describing the agonising sufferings
to which Leo Nikolaevitch was subjected in his family circle, I have
to my regret been forced to state a great deal which appears as an
attack upon the character and behaviour of his wife. And therefore,
to prevent any misunderstandings on the part of readers with regard
to my personal relations with her, I wish to speak out openly upon
the subject.

It would perhaps have been natural for me, as a friend of Leo
Nikolaevitch's, to feel bitterness and hostility towards the person
who had been for him such a heavy cross during the last thirty years
of his life. And it would be natural for the reader to suppose that
under the influence of such feelings I could not be free from
prejudice in regard to Sofya Andreyevna, and could not help, even
against my will, laying the colour on thick in describing her
deficiencies. There will no doubt be ill-wishers who will say that,
moved by resentment, I find a satisfaction in laying bare in an
exaggerated form the mistakes and failings of a person who caused me
much suffering. But in spite of the naturalness of such suppositions,
they would in the present case be mistaken. In reality my attitude to
Leo Nikolaevitch's wife is quite different.

First of all, as in Leo Nikolaevitch's lifetime I never forgot, so
after the death of both of them I never can forget, that Sofya
Andreyevna was his wife, _i.e._ occupied quite an exceptional
position in regard to him, and for the first half of their life
together was the person nearest to him in the world. This
circumstance alone has inspired, and still inspires, a peculiar
strictness toward myself in my behaviour to her and circumspection in
my judgments of her. Moreover, having been a close witness of the
wonderfully loving solicitude with which Leo Nikolaevitch behaved to
his wife, never losing hope of the possibility of her spiritual
awakening, I could not on my side help being infected by this
attitude, at least so far as not to feel ill-will or prejudice
against her.

Apart from that, I do not on principle acknowledge a man's right to
judge another. The character and behaviour of this or the other
person depends on so many external and internal circumstances for
which the person is not in the least responsible; and the most secret
region in our inner consciousness, in which we really are answerable
to our own conscience, is so entirely beyond the reach of any outside
eye that we have neither the power nor the right to judge any but
ourselves. In relation to anyone else we can judge only their
actions, laying completely aside, as not within our competence, the
question of the degree of their responsibility for committing them.
With this point of view every censure, irritation, or vexation with
anyone, to say nothing of wrath or revenge, appears merely as the
sign of our own imperfection, against which, when looked upon as
such, it is easier to struggle than when such feelings are regarded
as legitimate.

In view of these two circumstances, though I have, willy-nilly, in
the present work to exhibit Sofya Andreyevna in an unfavourable
light, I have not done so from personal ill-will to her, nor in a
spirit of censure, but simply through the necessity of giving a
faithful picture of what Leo Nikolaevitch had to endure.

I know that many will fail to understand my true motives and will
severely censure me. I resign myself to this in advance. But I
confess it grieves me, grieves me deeply, that by this present book I
shall be bound to cause pain to those members of Leo Nikolaevitch's
family who are still alive and who are nearest to him--his children.
An old friend of their father's, I have always been conscious of
being a friend of the family as well, and I naturally attach
particular value to good relations with them. If they feel bitter
against me, I beg them to believe that, whether mistakenly or not, I
have, in any case, sincerely felt myself morally bound to act in the
way I have acted, for reasons set forth in the Introduction. I beg
them also to consider that the present publication of the truth I
knew about their father's family life was, so to speak, forcibly
wrung from me by all the untruths on the subject which for many years
were persistently circulated all over the world, both in speaking and
writing, by their own mother and their two brothers, Ilya Lvovitch
and Leo Lvovitch. These two made it a kind of profession to give
public lectures on the subject. Quite recently I came across, in one
of the most popular foreign newspapers, the Paris _Figaro_, a series
of articles by Leo Lvovitch Tolstoy in which he strives to cover the
memory of his father with shame and ignominy, in contradistinction to
that of his mother, whose image he idealises till it becomes utterly
distorted. He is so careless with the facts that, under the influence
of his notorious envy and enmity for his father, he tells absolute
untruths about him and definitely slanders him, though perhaps
without meaning to do so. Such pernicious attacks upon Leo
Nikolaevitch made in the world's Press by some of his nearest
relatives give me reason to hope that his other relatives will not be
surprised when they find, as their father's champion upon the same
arena, one of his most intimate friends, who is able to speak more
freely concerning the relations between their parents than those who
are naturally constrained by the bonds of blood relationship.

It goes without saying that Sofya Andreyevna, like everyone else, had
her virtues and her defects, but at the same time it will be readily
understood that if Leo Nikolaevitch was reduced to the necessity of
leaving her, it was not her good qualities which drove him to it.
And therefore, in describing the causes of his departure, I have
inevitably been forced to dwell upon the negative sides of her
character.

In this brief narrative exclusively devoted to one definite event in
the life of Leo Nikolaevitch and the internal and external
circumstances connected with that event, I have not made it my aim to
draw a general and complete picture of the characters of Leo
Nikolaevitch and Sofya Andreyevna. The limited range of my special
task laid upon me the necessity of keeping strictly within the limits
of those of their characteristics and peculiarities which in one way
or another threw a direct light upon the incident described. There
could be no question of an all-round and to any extent exhaustive
account of the characters of those persons, apart from the fact that
such a task is far beyond my capacity. The most important and perhaps
the most difficult aspect of the task which actually lay before me
consisted in exhibiting in their full force the circumstances which
in the end compelled Leo Nikolaevitch to take his final step, with
perfect truthfulness, exaggerating nothing, of course, but at the
same time concealing nothing from false delicacy. This I have tried
to do as conscientiously, carefully and truthfully as I can. Though I
might from the natural perhaps, but in the present case misplaced,
sensibility have smoothed over the extremes of Sofya Andreyevna's
behaviour, and have softened the real character of her attitude to
Leo Nikolaevitch, yet in doing that I should have deprived the
motives of his departure of reasonable basis and inevitability, and
should have set forth Leo Nikolaevitch's impulses in a more or less
distorted form--and that, of course, was inadmissible.

Even in the lifetime of Sofya Andreyevna Tolstoy I did at one time
entertain the idea of publishing the truth about Leo Nikolaevitch's
leaving home in her interests. I cherished the hope that from such a
truthful account she might derive some conception of how much Leo
Nikolaevitch suffered at her hands, how he struggled with himself,
how self-sacrificingly he returned her good for evil, how
persistently, in spite of everything, he believed in the divine spark
in her soul, and how he rejoiced and was touched at the slightest
gleam of that spark. And who knows, I said to myself, perhaps such a
presentation before her eyes of what really happened, in
contradistinction to the fantastic inventions with which she
screened the truth from herself--perhaps this truthful picture of
what Leo Nikolaevitch really did endure, might help her in time to
recognise the truth, to come to herself, and to become one in soul
with him who loved her so that he laid down his soul for her?

But at the time I did not decide to do this, and now I do not regret
it. Apart from any external influences, there is no doubt that after
Leo Nikolaevitch's death there appeared at times a certain inner
softening in Sofya Andreyevna, though only of brief duration. So it
was, for instance, immediately after his death, when, in the presence
of several persons, she repeated in spiritual agonies that she had
been the cause of his death. And though a prolonged period followed
after it during which she displayed, at least in words, her former
indifference or even hostility to Leo Nikolaevitch, yet before her
own death, as those near her relate, she again expressed regret for
the wrong she had done him. And if outwardly she repented but little,
yet who can say what were her thoughts and reflections in her soul,
and especially what passed in her consciousness during those dying
hours and minutes when man, cut off from communication with those
around him, in complete solitude before his Maker, knows that he is
departing this life?

And though as she left this world Sofya Andreyevna carried with her
the answer to this question, nevertheless we have no grounds for
denying the possibility that the cherished hope which Leo
Nikolaevitch never lost, that sooner or later she would be one with
him in spirit, was realised at last before her death. Let us, too,
look with a spirit of love and compassion upon the errors, the
defects and the spiritual limitations of the companion of Leo
Nikolaevitch's life. But at the same time let us boldly look the
truth in the face, in no way softening the magnitude of the
sufferings endured by Leo Nikolaevitch by concealing the true
attitude of his wife to him, or by depicting her behaviour in a
softened light. If we keep in mind the great divine love with which
he loved her soul, then in face of the naked truth we shall not
condemn, but shall sincerely compassionate, her whose destiny it was
to serve as the instrument of his severest trials. And we shall
understand that those trials which in the end exhausted Leo
Nikolaevitch's physical forces and brought about his death were
obviously needful to the manifestations in him of the fullness of
spiritual strength received from him by God.




  Printed in Great Britain by
  Richard Clay & Sons, Limited,
  Bungay, Suffolk.




      *       *       *       *




Transcriber's note:

Minor corrections were made to the original publication.