1853
In January, the battery in which Leo Tolstoy served went on active service against Shámyl. The expedition assembled at Fort Grózny, where scenes of debauchery occurred.
On 18th February Tolstoy's life was in great danger. A shell fired by the enemy smashed the carriage of a cannon he was pointing. Strange to say he was not even wounded. On 1st April he returned with his detachment to Starogládovsk; and in May we find him writing to his brother Sergius that he had applied for his discharge, and hoped in six weeks' time to return home a free man. Difficult as his admission to the army had been, he found, however, that to retire was a yet harder matter, destined to take not weeks but years.
On 13th June his life was again in danger owing to an adventure which supplied him with the subject he utilised later on in A Prisoner in the Caucasus.
It being dangerous to travel between the Russian forts without an escort, non-combatants, as well as stores and baggage, were periodically convoyed from one post to another. On these expeditions it was forbidden for any one to detach himself from the main body; but the intolerable slowness of the infantry march on a hot day, frequently tempted those who were mounted, to ride on, and to run the risk of being attacked by the 'Tartars' (who were generally Circassians). On one such occasion five horsemen, including Tolstoy and his friend Sádo, disobeyed the regulations and rode ahead. The two friends ascended the hillside to see whether any foes were visible, while their three companions proceeded along the valley below. Hardly had the two reached the crest of the ridge when they saw thirty mounted Tartars galloping towards them. Calculating that there was not time to rejoin their companions in the valley, Tolstoy shouted them a warning, and raced off along the ridge towards Fort Grózny, which was their destination. The three did not, at first, take his warning seriously, but wasting some precious moments before turning to rejoin the column, were overtaken by the Tartars, and two of them were very severely wounded before a rescue party from the convoy put the enemy to flight. Meanwhile Tolstoy and Sádo, pursued by seven horsemen along the hill ridge, had to ride nearly three miles to reach the fort. It so happened that Tolstoy was trying a young horse of Sádo's, while Sádo was riding Tolstoy's ambler, which could not gallop. Though Tolstoy could easily have escaped on Sádo's fiery horse, he would not desert his comrade. Sádo had a gun, unluckily not loaded, and so he could only make a pretence with it of aiming at his pursuers. It seemed almost certain that both fugitives would be killed; but apparently the Tartars decided to capture them alive, perhaps wishing to revenge themselves on Sádo for being a pro-Russian, and therefore they did not shoot them down. At last a sentinel at Grózny having espied their plight, gave the alarm and some Cossacks galloped to their rescue. At sight of these, the Tartars made off and the fugitives escaped uninjured.
Tolstoy continued his habit of forming resolutions; and about this time he wrote: 'Be straightforward, not rough, but frank with all men; yet not childishly frank without any need.... Refrain from wine and women ... the pleasure is so small and uncertain, and the remorse so great.... Devote yourself completely to whatever you do. On experiencing any strong sensation, wait; but having once considered the matter, though wrongly, act decisively.'
From the middle of July to October, Tolstoy again stayed at Pyatigórsk.
A companion he had brought with him to the Caucasus was his black bulldog, Boúlka. He intended to leave it at home, but after he had started, the dog had broken a pane of glass and escaped from the room in which it was confined, and when Tolstoy, after stopping at the first post-station, was just resuming his journey, he saw something black racing along the road after him. It was Boúlka, who rushed to his master, licked his hand, and lay down panting in the shade of a cart. The dog had galloped nearly fourteen miles in the heat of the day, and was rewarded by being taken to the Caucasus, where it was destined to meet with many adventures.
On one occasion this dog boldly attacked a wild boar, and had its stomach ripped open by the latter's tusk. While its wound was being sewn up, the dog licked its master's hand.
On another occasion, when Tolstoy was sitting at night with a friend in the village street, intending to start for Pyatigórsk at daybreak, they suddenly heard a sucking-pig squeal, and guessed that a wolf was killing it. Tolstoy ran into the house, seized a loaded gun, and returned in time to see a wolf running straight towards him from the other side of a wattle-fence. The wolf jumped on to the top of the fence and descended close to Tolstoy who, almost touching him with the muzzle of his gun, drew the trigger. The gun missed fire, and the wolf raced off, chased by Boúlka and by Tolstoy's setter, Milton. The wolf escaped, but not till it had snapped at Boúlka and inflicted a slight wound on his head. Strange to say, the wolf ventured to return a little later into the middle of the street, and again escaped unhurt.
Not long after, in Pyatigórsk, shortly before Tolstoy left the Caucasus, while drinking coffee in the garden of his lodging, he heard a tremendous noise of men and dogs, and, on inquiry, learnt that convicts had been let out of gaol to kill the dogs, of whom there were too many in the town, but that orders had been given to spare dogs wearing collars. As ill-luck would have it, Tolstoy had removed Boúlka's collar; and Boúlka, apparently recognising the convicts as his natural enemies, rushed out into the street and flew at one of them. A man had just freed the long hook he carried, from the corpse of a dog he had caught and held down while his companions beat it to death with bludgeons. He now adroitly hooked Boúlka and drew the unfortunate dog towards him, calling to his mate to kill it, which the latter prepared to do. Boúlka however bounded aside with such force that the skin of his thigh burst where the hook held it, and with tail between his legs and a red wound on his thigh, he flew back into the house and hid under Tolstoy's bed. His escape was not of much use. The wolf that had snapped at him six weeks before must have been mad, for Boúlka after showing premonitory symptoms of rabies, disappeared, and was never heard of more.
Tolstoy's state of mind during the latter part of this year is indicated by his letters. To his brother Sergius he wrote on 20th July:
I think I already wrote you that I have sent in my resignation. God knows, however, on account of the war with Turkey, whether it will be accepted, or when. This disturbs me very much, for I have now grown so accustomed to happy thoughts of soon settling down in the country, that to return to Starogládovsk and again wait unendingly—as I have to wait for everything connected with my service—will be very unpleasant.
Again, in December, he writes from Starogládovsk:
Please write about my papers quickly. This is necessary. 'When shall I come home?' God only knows. For nearly a year I have been thinking only of how to sheath my sword, but still cannot manage it. And as I must fight somewhere, I think it will be pleasanter to do so in Turkey than here, and I have therefore applied to Prince Serge Dmítrievitch [Gortchakóf] about it, and he writes me that he has written to his brother, but what the result will be, I do not know.
It will be remembered that Tolstoy's paternal grandmother was a Gortchakóf. Through her he was nearly related to Prince S. D. Gortchakóf and to his brother, Prince Michael Dmítrievitch Gortchakóf, who had been a friend of his father's in the war of 1812, and was now in command of the Russian army on the Danube.
The letter continues:
At any rate by New Year I expect to change my way of life, which I confess wearies me intolerably. Stupid officers, stupid conversations, and nothing else. If there were but a single man to whom one could open one's soul! Tourgénef is right: 'What irony there is in solitude,'—one becomes palpably stupid oneself. Although Nikólenka has gone off with the hounds—Heaven knows why (Epíshka[13] and I often call him 'a pig' for so doing)—I go out hunting alone for whole days at a time from morning to evening, with a setter. That is my only pleasure—and not a pleasure but a narcotic. One tires oneself out, gets famished, sleeps like the dead, and a day has passed. When you have an opportunity, or are yourself in Moscow, buy me Dickens' David Copperfield in English, and send me Sadler's English Dictionary which is among my books.
Of the entries in his Diary at this time, we may note the following:
All the prayers I have invented I replace by the one prayer, 'Our Father.' All the requests I can make to God are far more loftily expressed and more worthily of Him, in the words 'Thy Kingdom come, as in heaven so on earth.'
About this time he completed his Memoirs of a Billiard Marker, and sent it to the Contemporary with a letter expressing his own dissatisfaction with the hasty workmanship of the story; it did not appear till more than a year later. He was also now at work on Boyhood.
Seventeen years after Tolstoy had left the Caucasus, an officer stationed at Starogládovsk found his memory still fresh among the Cossacks, and saw Mariána (comparatively aged by that time), as well as several elderly Cossack hunters who had shot wild fowl and wild boars with Tolstoy. In his regiment he left the reputation of being an excellent narrator, who enthralled every one by his conversation.