1859-1860
During this winter Tolstoy devoted much time to an attempt to organise schools on and near his estate. The education of its peasant children was one of the things Russia most needed, and most terribly neglected. Tolstoy recognised this, and set himself strenuously and eagerly to show how the great need could be met. The work he did at this time was, however, only preliminary to what he undertook after his next visit to Western Europe, and he was far from being mentally at peace. At the commencement of the New Year he noted in his Diary: 'The burden of the estate, the burden of bachelor life, and all sorts of doubts and pessimistic feelings agitate my mind.'
One mention of the serfs (who were now nearing freedom) occurs in a letter Tolstoy wrote to Fet on 23rd February 1860, in reply to a note in which the latter had expressed a wish to buy an estate, settle down in the country, and devote himself to farming. Tolstoy replies that there is an estate for sale adjoining his own, containing:
Four hundred desyatíns of good land with, unfortunately, seventy souls of bad serfs. But that does not matter; they will gladly pay quit-rent [in lieu of personal service] as mine do, at the rate of Rs. 30 a tyaglo [man and wife with an allotment of land] or Rs. 660 for the twenty-two tyaglos, and you will get not less than that, if not more, at the Emancipation, and will have sufficient unexhausted land and meadow left to yield about Rs. 2000 a year, or over Rs. 2600 in all. The price asked for the estate is Rs. 24,000, besides a mortgage of about Rs. 5000.... At any rate it would be a good bargain to buy it for Rs. 20,000.... The seller is an old man who is ruined, and wants to sell it quickly in order to get rid of his son-in-law. He has twice sent to offer it me. The above calculation shows what the estate should yield in a couple of years' time if about Rs. 5000 be spent on improving it; but even in its present condition one can answer for a return of Rs. 1500, which is more than 7 per cent. on the cost.
In Russia to buy serfs was not then considered more discreditable than it is in England to-day to buy shares in a china or match factory; and in the same letter Tolstoy goes on to discuss literature:
I have read Tourgénef's On the Eve. This is my opinion: to write novels is undesirable, especially for people who are depressed and do not well know what they want from life. However, On the Eve is much better than A Nest of Gentlefolk, and there are in it excellent negative characters: the artist and the father. The rest are not types; even their conception, their position, is not typical, or they are quite insignificant. That however is always Tourgénef's mistake. The girl is hopelessly bad: 'Ah, how I love thee ... her eyelashes were long.' In general it always surprises me that Tourgénef, with his mental powers and poetic sensibility, should even in his methods not be able to refrain from banality. This banality shows itself most of all in his negative methods, which recall Gógol. There is no humanity or sympathy for the characters, but the author exhibits monsters whom he scolds and does not pity. This jars painfully with the tone and intention of Liberalism in everything else. It was all very well in the days of Tsar Goroh Ostróvsky's The Storm is, in my opinion, a wretched work, but will be successful. Not Ostróvsky and Tourgénef are to blame, but the times.... Something else is now needed: not that we should learn and criticise, but that we should teach Jack and Jill at least a little of what we know. This letter to Fet, who was in Moscow, ends with requests to procure some books, including a veterinary handbook, a veterinary instrument, and a lancet for use on human beings; to see about procuring six ploughs of a special make, and to find out the price of clover and timothy-grass, of which Tolstoy had some to sell.