University of Virginia Library

COUNT TOLSTOY AT HOME.
BY CHARLES JOHNSTON.

WHILE I was reading "What is Art?" it occurred to me that it would be a very interesting thing if one could get a sense of Tolstoy's personality, and his surroundings,—something comparable in vividness and truth to the innumerable portraits in his own books. The study of a work so sincere, so full of power, so overburdened even with moral earnestness, and representing, as its author says, the work and the best thought of fifteen years, brings with it an almost irresistible curiosity to look through the page to the man behind it.

And then with all its merits, with all its force, the book has great faults and shortcomings, and one feels that, with a closer knowledge of the author's character, it might be much easier to understand these and make allowance for them. For instance, one is sensible, all through the book, of a great lack of urbanity, a tendency to impatience, almost an inveterate habit of scolding; is there any outward and visible cause for this acerbity? or can we trace it back to anything in the author's life? And again, the almost morbid and prudish attitude towards the human body, that comes out again and again in Tolstoy's strictures on modern art; one is tempted to think he believes the Elohim, having made man, made haste to create fig-trees; or to imagine Tolstoy coming unawares to the gateway of Eden, and then, greatly scandalized, hastening to lay a complaint before the park-keeper. And, once more, his very strange and almost inexplicable hostility towards all things Hellenic, so that in one place he seriously describes the Greeks as a "slave-owning, half-barbarous little nation, with a trick of depicting the human body, and who had put up some pretty buildings"—one does not speak of Phidias and the Parthenon like that, unless one's feeling's are very strongly

involved; how did this come about, and what are the outward traces of it? Can one find the reason by a closer acquaintance with this very dogmatic prophet?

It happened that one of Tolstoy's pronouncements, whether on the dissenting sects, or the likelihood of famine, or whatever it may have been, had brought him into unusual prominence in his native land, where they regard him with a queer mixture of admiration and dislike; and a number of visitors had found their way to Yasnaya Polnaya, to talk to him about the universe. Several of them put on record the details of their visits, and published them. And three of these records found their way to me.

Now there is nothing of very remarkable interest in anything that was said at any of these interviews, as there seems to have been nothing very striking about the personalities of the visitors; yet it seems to me that they have managed to get Tolstoi's likeness, with a quite unexpected fidelity, and the fact that there are three points of view for the three observers gives the picture a stereoscopic relief and completeness. They give discordant accounts, which nevertheless make a harmonious unity, something in the fashion of "The Ring and the Book."

The first visitor was a little Russian journalist, who was very familiar, and at the same time very much afraid. He has not described himself, but he has let himself ooze out between the lines, so to speak, in describing Tolstoy, and one can form a very accurate picture of his outward and inward man. He is the sort of person who would wear a rather faded frock coat with a low hat and thick boots, and be very respectful to the footman, and make great play with his hat. Well, let us introduce him to the Count, whom, by the way, he calls by his first name.

"Lyef Nicolaiëvitch," he says, "turned towards the sofa and sat down in an armchair between the sofa and the table. Alas! in such a place, I had not the right to give myself wholly up to observing the great writer who had placed himself so near me. From under gray, shaggy brows, those gifted

all-observing eyes, brown, alert, gleaming, gazed at me steadily; every feature had long been familiar to me from portraits; every curl of his bushy beard, the locks growing scant on his gifted brow, and most of all, those powerful eyes of his, which no portrait can render.

"And looking so closely, not at the great writer's portrait, but at himself, I became acutely conscious that I could find no justification either for my presence there or for the presumptuous demand which I had meant to make; for I had come prepared to say this: 'Lyef Nicolaiëvitch, I have come with the single purpose of seeing the great writer, and perhaps to interchange a word or two with him, perhaps even to press his gifted hand, and perhaps, . . . taking advantage of his unlimited good-nature, to carry away with me a memento of his gifted hand, in the form of a signature on his latest portrait. . . . But now I felt clearly that I could not pronounce the words. For if every one of the many million people who pronounce the name of Lyef Tolstoy with a true glow in their hearts had the hardihood to disturb him with a like intent, then not only would the great old man have not a second for his mighty work, but he would not even have a second for rest and repose. I grew conscious of all this, in the first few seconds, and felt that I was not only an intruder, but even impertinent.

"So in coward's fashion I hid the true purpose of my visit to the Count, and tried to give an answer to his enquiry, hostile to the truth, if you wish, but at least a little more reasonable. For he had asked me: 'In what way can I be of service to you?'

"I tried to explain that, being a victim of the literary itch, I could in no wise hinder myself from writing artistic productions. And as I had read in an article by the Frenchman André Bonnier that the Count followed all the most trivial effusions of contemporary literature with the greatest patience, I had decided to ask him whether he would not be so good as to look over my printed works, and pronounce his opinion on them, an opinion which would be precious to me.

"The Count listened very attentively. When my tongue had got altogether tangled up, and would proceed no further, the Count continued to watch me with the utmost seriousness, nodding his head the while, as who should say: 'Do not take the trouble to tell me too minutely what you are after; I understand you pretty well already.'

"But it seems that I either confused terribly what I wanted to say, or that the Count was too used to find that if a writer came to him it would certainly be for help, and for that reason he answered me:

"Unfortunately, I cannot grant your request. I do not follow the type of literature of which you speak at all. And if they were to tell me that all the writers of belles-lettres in the whole white world had ceased altogether to write their novels, stories, and tales, I should not regret it in the least. I have no longer anything to do with all that. If you wish to occupy yourself with belles-lettres, that is your business; you will give your work where there is a demand for it. But my opinion counts for nothing. If a paper does not want a thing, it will not take it because I recommend it. Not long ago a paper refused to print the really excellent poem, in my opinion, of a young poet, although I wrote to the editor to say that, to my mind, it was an excellent poem.'

"And then I tried to explain that I had not come for protection and patronage, because my efforts were already accepted where they were wanted; and that I had only come to learn the Count's opinion about my little things, and that I did not make a point of it in the least, and apologized for disturbing the Count.

"'But why should you want to know my opinion about your writings? And why should I read your writings? Let us suppose that you make a table'—and the count laid his hand on the polished surface of the table, and spread his handsome fingers out on it; 'let us suppose that you wish to know how other people like your table, you must take it where tables are sold, and they will tell you there whether your work is good or bad. This is just what I say to you. Why should I

read your work, when it does not interest me in the least? And it is probably not worth reading. At least a hundred and fifty people have come to me with the same request. I tried to read their works. And in the majority of cases, they turned out to be neither the one thing nor the other. One could not call them good. Why should I waste my time reading your works? I have not much time; I am seventy years old.'

"Good heavens," exclaims the interviewer, now thoroughly abashed, "how I regretted that my feet rested on the polished oak floor, and not on soft earth that would open and let me through.

"I repeated that I did not in the least wish to insist on my request, and with a desperate and half-formless determination to bring my mission to an end I explained to the great writer, in what words I know not, my desire to have his signature on a photograph which I drew forth from a portfolio.

"'With pleasure,' said Lyef Nicolaiëvitch, 'I will sign the portrait.'

"I felt that I was ready to jump with joy, and hastened to take leave of the Count, to apologize for his time which I had taken up, and to thank him for his kindness.

"How opportune was my action I afterwards understood from the circumstance that at that very moment the Countess entered and came to her husband with something confidential.

"'Here,' said the great writer, handing me the portrait, with the ink still wet; 'forgive me for not being able to grant your request.'

"And he shook hands with me," says the little journalist. We will allow him to bow himself out.

It is very refreshing to find that there is real humility in the world, even if it does come perilously near to abjectness, as in the present case. We may simply note that the said journalist sacrificed the honorarium for his article to a charitable institution in which Count Tolstoy takes an interest. The whole thing is refreshing in its simplicity; at the same time

one must admit that this abject person has a keen enough eye for vivid detail.

The next account which I have is a record of the visit of M. André Bonnier, whom the little journalist mentions as saying that Tolstoy followed the light literature of the day. Perhaps he should have come first, but I found the little journalist much stronger in the outward details which come first in our composite picture. M. André Bonnier has not the slightest inclination to sink through the floor. He is a rather gloomy, sceptical person, who wears the air of being a very great sinner, but of despising even his own sins, the fashionable tone with French men of letters since the décadent and délinquent movement set in.

"The first thing," he writes, "that struck me about Tolstoy is the confidence with which he affirms that he knows the truth. This conviction penetrates his glance, the vigor of his voice, the firmness of his step. On his whole personality stands the stamp of truth. It very rarely happens that he speaks very loud, or that he grows excited, when expressing or defending an idea. Even when you feel that he is growing dissatisfied, he speaks without loudness, in exactly the same tone. He is so confident that he is not mistaken and that he is speaking truth absolute, impersonal, and self-evident, that he evidently does not think it necessary to defend it jealously and passionately, as an opinion belonging to him individually. Doubt is wholly foreign to him. What he wishes to know, he knows; and what he does not know does not interest him. If his eyes are sometimes clouded, and if at times the clear vision of the sage deserts him, he is grieved not at himself, but because he has failed to inspire belief in others in consequence of their unwillingness to give way before evident truth.

"So I saw, in my own century, a man who really has faith, whom no sense of the unknown disturbs, and who lives without tormenting doubts, a stranger to vacillation and weakness. It was worth coming so far to see that. I think that from this point of view Tolstoy stands alone; for most of us live by

hazard; and in this lies the saddest side of our existence. The best of us do all that is in our power, but without really feeling certain that we are doing right. We wander, feeling our way along the line of least resistance. But now I have seen a man who believes in what he does.

"They tell me that one of Tolstoy's friends once expressed himself in the Count's presence in a manner hostile to Tolstoy's ideas, but, of course, with perfect courtesy. Tolstoy remained silent for a certain time, and then, looking straight in his opponent's face, or to speak quite accurately, in the face of the opponent of truth, he spoke: 'I cannot bear when anyone does not share my opinion.'

"This caused a certain awkwardness, and Tolstoy thus explained his words: 'Because there can only be one truth.'

"'Truth is one,' said his opponent; 'I agree with that perfectly; but opinions concerning truth are many.'

"Then Tolstoy closed the conversation with these words: 'There are no opinions; there is only truth!'

"Perhaps," adds M. Bonnier, "I ought not to record this anecdote, because it may be understood in an unfavorable sense. I fear it may lead people to believe that Tolstoy is proud. This would be unjust. But such is the weakness of our nature that we who are not men of genius put ourselves right in our own eyes by accusing men with convictions of pride. No, Tolstoy is not proud, although he has much more reason for pride than many people who are really proud."

In what this interviewer says we seem to get a clew to much that we have found faulty in "What is Art?" There is the extreme dogmatism of an intense and yet rather narrow nature; and there is, most of all, a total lack of the sense of humor. One has noticed, in Tolstoy's relations with the humble, effusive journalist, that the writer is before all else a man of his caste, exclusive by instinct, to the tips of his fingers, and, although he is himself a writer, with a great deal of that haughty contempt for mere writers which was felt in England in the days of Elizabeth, and in Russia up till the middle of this generation. Writing was a thing a gentleman could only

concern himself with at the cost of a certain loss of dignity. So that we can hardly agree that Tolstoy is not proud; he is even arrogant, by temperament and education,—preëminently a caste man. And, with this, he is at war with his caste. His inmost nature is utterly at variance with his habitual nature. Universal man, in him, is warring against caste. And hence, I think, we have this bitterness, this impatience, this lack of urbanity, which rather mars his work, unless, as in the case of his analysis of Wagner, it goes so far as to be absolutely amusing.

To speak of Tolstoy's shyness of the human body is a delicate task, and one which had better, perhaps, be left alone. But one may suggest that here too education and conviction have had a hard fight; that the rich officers of Tolstoy's youth had a habit of sensuousness not easily combated; and that this reaction has become almost morbid in its intensity, and, once more, has suffered from Tolstoy's deficient sense of humor. And this, I think, is why he bears the Greeks a grudge. After all, if they made statues of Theseus, they did not forget Aphrodite, and, if a sensuous society suddenly or even slowly and painfully reformed, they would certainly bear a grudge against the patroness of Sappho, the lady brilliant and undying, whose chariot was drawn by sparrows.

But it is a great deficiency, this lack of the Greek sense. As one who has painfully translated page after page of Tolstoy, who has had to uncoil his long and tangled sentences, again and again numbering a hundred words and more, I cannot but wish that Tolstoy had gone through a severe course of iambic trimeters until he came to appreciate the true beauty of a short sentence. The Russians in general have not much feeling for verse, that is for even rhythm and the melody of words; and to this is due a certain harshness and crudeness in so much of what they write. And Tolstoy sins beyond the measure of his countrymen. Again, in the Greek spirit there are two great qualities, lucidity and buoyancy. Who would not thank fate to find Tolstoy more buoyant and less lugubrious? Where is the joy of living, the contagion of good-nature

and comity, which are so eminently Greek? It seems to me that Tolstoy looks at Greece through the corruption of Byzantium, and altogether misses the lightness and brightness of the true Hellas.

But to come back to the last of his three visitors, a Russian prince. And here the caste man comes out instantly. Look at the totally different greeting he receives, from the condescension which overawed the little journalist and the cold reserve which confronted the Frenchman.

"I drove up to his house," says the prince, "and found him at home; somewhat indisposed, but on his feet, and, as usual, taking a lively interest in everything. Count Lyef Nicolaiëvitch had caught cold; he does not know exactly when; but, two or three weeks back, true to his practice of physical work, he toiled a long time with a shovel, and, sweating, caught a cold in the back. Or perhaps it was when he was skating, as he spends an hour or more on the ice every day, and he is sixty-eight years old. For the moment he feels better, though still feverish and unable to write. Otherwise he works daily with his pen in his study from ten in the morning till four in the afternoon. Lyef Nicolaiëvitch came to meet me, holding a book of Heine's poetry in his hand, and he read to me several beautiful poems of the famous writer with evident delight. Tolstoy reads small German type, even in the evening, with ease, so perfect is his eyesight.

"'I am taking advantage of my illness,' he said, 'to read Heine again. I am very fond of him. I cannot write just now.'

"From Heine the conversation turned to Zola and Dreyfus. Lyef Nicolaiëvitch was very much astonished when I told him that Zola was generally believed to be a Venetian Jew.

"'For me, with my convictions,' he said, 'this anti-Semitism in France is very odious; and all this Chauvinism and out-cry for the army, too. And I confess that I strongly sympathized with this movement of Zola's, until I discovered that the students were against him. I believe in the students, and hold that truth dwells ever with the young.'

"The subject was changed to women.

"'Women,' said Count Tolstoy, 'are all talking of liberty, and saying that, as Christians, they have a right to everything. But should a free Christian woman be like our ladies—in low dresses, flying to balls and dinners, and, for this, not dressing, but undressing? My understanding of a Christian woman is far different: strict, full of Christian love towards her neighbors, understanding and strictly fulfilling her family duties; such a woman is free. In early Christian days women did not undress like the heathen; they wore loose robes, hiding their forms; they did not strip themselves, as the heathen do. I am unwell just at present, and unable to write; but I hope I shall not die, so that I may write much about women. Before I die, I shall say all that is in my heart concerning womankind.'"

This last sentence calls to mind a reflection that often occurred to me while I was reading "What is Art?" In setting forth the new ideal of the future, which is to revolutionize not only art, but life, Tolstoy persistently speaks of it as the Christian ideal, and of its outcome as true Christian art. Now, while it is quite true that one fundamental principle, which he holds to be of the greatest importance, and which is indeed of the greatest importance, may well be called Christian, yet it seems to me that this continuous harping on a single string is likely to do more harm than good; that he is likely rather to drive people away from his ideal than to attract people to what he holds to be real Christianity. This allusion to the early Christian women in their long robes suggests the same thought. It is quite certain that the consideration of what the early Christian women did, or left undone, will weigh for very little in the future development of the idea of woman's liberty. And in saying this I am not for a moment blind to the fact that the Christian religion, in the strictest sense, has done very much to elevate the life of women. But what I should like to say is this: Christianity has done this, not from any exclusive or supernatural quality which it possesses, but because it rings true in this particular to our best sense of human life. We have in our inmost

hearts the love of liberty, of fair dealing, of loving-kindness, and of tender mercy; and these things go far deeper than the fact that we do or do not believe in a certain dogmatic system. They are the heart's core of the human heart. And what we shall reach in the future in the ideals of liberty and the intuition of each other's lives, we shall reach, not because these things are called Christian or were advocated by the Christian faith, but because they are real; because they lie at the heart of human life. Now human life is something which we all have, and which we all reverence in our best hours; while a dogmatic faith is something we may or may not have, may or may not reverence. Why then appeal to the less instead of to the greater? Why not appeal to life itself? Why not judge all things, and faith among the rest, by our deepest intuition of the reality of life— something we have ever with us and can always verify; something which all lands and all ages have held in common, while their faiths have too often only served to separate them?

Tolstoy, if he feels called on to express a judgment, should judge womankind not by what he fancies he knows of the early Christian women, but by his intuition of life—set up for them the standard of the immortal soul, with its power, its gladness, its penetrating beauty, and its everlasting mystery, which no faith or philosophy has ever perfectly understood.