1852
On 2nd July he completed Childhood, and a few days later despatched the manuscript, signed only with the initials L. N. T., to the best Petersburg monthly, The Contemporary. On 28th August he received a reply from the editor, the poet Nekrásof, saying he would publish the story and that he thought its author had talent. Another letter followed, dated 5th September 1852, in which Nekrásof said that having re-read the story in proof, he found it 'much better than I had realised at first. I can say definitely that its author has talent.' He added that it would appear in the next number of his magazine.
Tolstoy notes in his Diary: 'Received letter from Nekrásof; praises, but no money.'
Nekrásof's next letter is dated 30th October, and explains that it is not customary to pay authors for their first work, but that he hopes Tolstoy will send him more stories, and that in future he will pay him as much as to the very best known writers, namely Rs. 50 (nearly £7 at that time) per sheet of sixteen pages. He mentioned also that Childhood had been very well received by the public.
Tolstoy kept his authorship a secret, revealing it to no one except Nicholas and Aunt Tatiána. His sister Mary was by this time back at her husband's estate, situated near Tourgénef's village of Spássky. There Tourgénef came one day to visit her, bringing with him the last number of the Contemporary. Full of praise of a new story by an unknown author, he began reading it aloud, and to her great astonishment Mary recognised, one after another, various incidents from her own childhood. Her first guess was that Nicholas must have written it.
Among the writers who at once acclaimed Tolstoy's genius was Panáef, co-editor of the Contemporary, who, Tourgénef pretended, had to be carefully shunned by his friends on the Névsky (the chief street in Petersburg) lest he should insist on reading them extracts from the new story. Before long the work reached Dostoyévsky in Siberia, and he was so struck by it that he wrote to a friend asking him to find out who the talented L. N. T. was.
Meanwhile Tolstoy continued his military career in the Caucasus. On his return to Starogládovsk in August, he had noted in his Diary: 'Simplicity—that is the quality which above all others I desire to attain.'
He had to pass an unpleasant month in consequence of the autumn manœuvres, about which he wrote: 'It was not very pleasant to have to march about and fire off cannons; especially as it disturbed the regularity of my life'; and he rejoiced when it was over and he was again able to devote himself to 'hunting, writing, reading, and conversation with Nicholas.' He had become fond of shooting game, at which—as at all physical exercises—he was expert; and he spent two or three hours a day at it. He writes to his Aunt Tatiána:
At 100 paces from my lodging I find wild fowl, and in half an hour I kill 2, 3, or 4. Besides the pleasure, the exercise is excellent for my health, which in spite of the waters is not very good. I am not ill, but I often catch cold and suffer from sore throat or from toothache or from rheumatism, so that I have to keep to my room at least two days in the week.
One of the forms of sport he enjoyed during his stay in the Caucasus was strepet shooting: the strepet being a steppe grouse. Before they migrate in mid-August, these birds assemble in enormous flocks, and are extremely wild and difficult of approach. It is hardly possible to get within two hundred or two hundred and fifty yards of such a flock. Tolstoy had a horse that was specially trained for this particular sport. On it he used to ride at a foot-pace two or three times round a flock, carefully narrowing the circle till he got as near as possible without alarming the birds. Then he would dash forward at full gallop with his gun ready. The moment the birds rose he dropped his reins on the horse's neck, and the well-trained animal would instantly stop, allowing its master to take aim.
Tolstoy's military career was not giving him satisfaction. Having left home without any definite plans, he had neglected to bring any documents with him, and the result of this was that instead of becoming an officer within eighteen months, as he expected to do when he entered the army, he now, after serving for ten months, received notice that he would have to serve another three years before he could obtain his commission.
In this difficulty he applied to his aunt P. I. Úshkof, who by application to an influential friend eventually succeeded in hastening his promotion. Meanwhile however Tolstoy—who had made up his mind to retire from the army as soon as he received his commission—almost lost patience.
On 24th December he completed the sketch entitled The Raid: A Volunteer's Story, and two days later posted it to the Contemporary, in which magazine it appeared in March 1853. The following passage occurs in this his first story of war, and foreshadows the attitude he ultimately made definitely his own. He is describing a march through Caucasian scenery to a night attack on a Tartar Aoul, and he says:
Nature, beautiful and strong, breathed conciliation.
Can it be that people have not room to live in this beautiful world, under this measureless, starry heaven? Can feelings of enmity, vengeance, or lust to destroy one's fellow beings, retain their hold on man's soul amid this enchanting Nature? All that is evil in man's heart should, one would think, vanish in contact with Nature—this immediate expression of beauty and goodness.
From the very start we find Tolstoy hampered in his work by that incubus of all Russian writers, the Censor. In a letter to his brother Sergius in May he writes: 'Childhood was spoilt, and The Raid simply ruined by the Censor. All that was good in it has been struck out or mutilated.' In comparing Tolstoy's literary achievement with that of Western writers, one should make a large allowance for the continual annoyance, delay, mutilation, and suppression inflicted on him by that terrible satellite of despotism.