1861
Soon after reaching Yásnaya he wrote (in the third week of May) to congratulate Fet on having become a landed proprietor:
How long it is since we met, and how much has happened to both of us meanwhile! I do not know how to rejoice sufficiently when I hear or think of your activity as a farmer, and I am rather proud to have had at least some hand in the matter.... It is good to have a friend; but he may die or go away, or one may not be able to keep pace with him; but Nature, to which one is wedded by a Notarial Deed, or to which one has been born by inheritance, is still better. It is one's own bit of Nature. She is cold, obdurate, disdainful and exacting, but then she is a friend one does not lose till death, and even then one will be absorbed into her. I am however at present less devoted to this friend: I have other affairs that attract me; yet but for the consciousness that she is there, and that if I stumble she is at hand to hold on to—life would be but a sad business.
A few days later, having received an invitation from Tourgénef, Tolstoy paid him a visit the first hours of which passed off to their mutual satisfaction. Tourgénef had just finished his favourite novel, Fathers and Sons, and it was arranged that after dinner Tolstoy was to read it and give his opinion on it. To do this the more comfortably, Tolstoy, left in the drawing-room by himself, lay down on a large sofa. He began to read; but the story seemed to him so artificially constructed and so unimportant in its subject-matter, that he fell fast asleep.
'I awoke,' he narrates, 'with a strange sensation, and when I opened my eyes I saw Tourgénef's back just disappearing.'
In spite of this occurrence and the unpleasant feeling it occasioned, the two novelists set out next morning to visit Fet, who was not expecting them that day.
While the visitors rested for a couple of hours, recovering from the fatigue of their journey, Mrs. Fet saw to it that the dinner assumed 'a more substantial and inviting appearance.' During the meal the whole party began an animated conversation, and Tourgénef, always fond of good eating, fully appreciated the efforts Fet's excellent man-cook had made. Champagne flowed, as was usual at such reunions. After dinner the three friends strolled to a wood a couple of hundred yards from the house, and lying down in the high grass at its outskirts, continued their talk with yet more freedom and animation.
Next morning at the usual breakfast time, about eight o'clock, the visitors entered the room where Mrs. Fet presided at the samovár. Fet sat at the opposite end of the table, Tourgénef at the hostess's right hand, and Tolstoy at her left. Knowing the importance Tourgénef attached to the education of his natural daughter, who was being brought up in France, Mrs. Fet inquired whether he was satisfied with her English governess. Tourgénef praised the latter highly, and mentioned that, with English exactitude, she had requested him to fix the sum his daughter might give away in charity. 'And now,' added Tourgénef, 'she requires my daughter to take in hand and mend the tattered clothes of the poor.'
To Tolstoy, the foreign education Tourgénef was giving his daughter, who was quite forgetting her own language, was very distasteful; and his feeling no doubt showed itself in his question:
'And you consider that good?'
'Certainly: it places the doer of charity in touch with everyday needs.'
'And I consider that a well-dressed girl with dirty, ill-smelling rags on her lap, is acting an insincere, theatrical farce.'
'I beg you not to say that!' exclaimed Tourgénef, with dilated nostrils.
'Why should I not say what I am convinced is true?' replied Tolstoy.
'Then you consider that I educate my daughter badly?'
Tolstoy replied that his thought corresponded to his speech.
Before Fet could interpose, Tourgénef, white with rage, exclaimed: 'If you speak in that way I will punch your head!' and, jumping up from the table and seizing his head in his hands, he rushed into the next room. A second later he returned and, addressing Mrs. Fet, said: 'For heaven's sake excuse my improper conduct, which I deeply regret!' and again left the room.
Fet, realising the impossibility of keeping his visitors together after what had happened, was perplexed what to do, for they had both arrived in Tourgénef's vehicle, and, newly established in the country, Fet, though he had horses, had none accustomed to be driven in the only conveyance he possessed. To get Tourgénef off was easy; but it was not without some difficulty and even danger from the restive horses, that Tolstoy was conveyed to the nearest post-station at which a hired conveyance could be procured.
From Novosélok, the first country house Tolstoy reached, he wrote Tourgénef a letter demanding an apology; and asked for an answer to be sent to the next post-house at Bogousláf. Tourgénef, not noticing this request, sent his reply to Fet's house, in consequence of which it was several hours late in reaching Tolstoy—who was so enraged at this (as it seemed to him) fresh act of discourtesy, that from Bogousláf he sent a messenger to procure pistols, and wrote a second letter containing a challenge to Tourgénef, and stating that he did not wish to fight in a merely formal manner, like literary men who finish up with champagne, but that he was in earnest, and hoped Tourgénef would meet him with pistols at the outskirt of the Bogousláf woods.
That night was a sleepless one for Tolstoy. The morning brought Tourgénef's reply to his first letter. It commenced in the usual formal manner of polite communications:
Gracious Sir, Leo Nikoláyevitch!—In reply to your letter, I can only repeat, what I myself considered it my duty to announce to you at Fet's: namely, that carried away by a feeling of involuntary enmity, the causes of which need not here be considered, I insulted you without any definite provocation; and I asked your pardon. What happened this morning proved clearly that attempts at intimacy between such opposite natures as yours and mine can lead to no good result; and I the more readily fulfil my duty to you, because the present letter probably terminates our relations with one another. I heartily hope it may satisfy you, and I consent in advance to your making what use you please of it.
With perfect respect, I have the honour to remain, Gracious Sir, your most humble servant,
Iv. Tourgénef.
Spássky, 27 May 1861.
P.S. 10.30 P.M.:
Iván Petróvitch has just brought back my letter, which my servant stupidly sent to Novosélok instead of to Bogousláf. I humbly beg you to excuse this accidental and regrettable mistake, and I hope my messenger will still find you at Bogousláf.
Tolstoy thereupon wrote to Fet:
I could not resist opening another letter from Mr. Tourgénef in reply to mine. I wish you well of your relations with that man, but I despise him. I have written to him, and therewith have terminated all relations, except that I hold myself ready to give him any satisfaction he may desire. Notwithstanding all my apparent tranquillity, I was disturbed in spirit and felt I must demand a more explicit apology from Mr. Tourgénef; I did this in my letter from Novosélok. Here is his answer, which I accept as satisfactory, merely informing him that my reason for excusing him is not our opposite natures, but one he may himself surmise.
In consequence of the delay which occurred, I sent besides this, another letter, harsh enough and containing a challenge, to which I have not received any reply; but should I receive one I shall return it unopened. So there is an end of that sad story, which, if it goes beyond your house, should do so with this addendum.
Tourgénef's reply to the challenge came to hand later, and ran as follows:
Your servant says you desire a reply to your letter; but I do not see what I can add to what I have already written; unless it be that I admit your right to demand satisfaction, weapons in hand. You have preferred to accept my spoken and repeated apology. That was as you pleased. I will say without phrases, that I would willingly stand your fire in order to efface my truly insane words. That I should have uttered them is so unlike the habits of my whole life, that I can only attribute my action to irritability evoked by the extreme and constant antagonism of our views. This is not an apology—I mean to say, not a justification—but an explanation. And therefore, at parting from you for ever—for such occurrences are indelible and irrevocable—I consider it my duty to repeat once again that in this affair you were in the right and I in the wrong. I add that what is here in question is not the courage I wish, or do not wish, to show, but an acknowledgment of your right to call me out to fight, in the accepted manner of course (with seconds), as well as your right to pardon me. You have chosen as you pleased, and I have only to submit to your decision. I renew my assurance of my entire respect,
Iv. Tourgénef.
The quarrel was not, however, destined to die out so quickly. Even good-natured Fet got into trouble by trying to reconcile the irascible novelists. Here is one of the notes he received from Tolstoy:
I request you not to write to me again, as I shall return your letters, as well as Tourgénef's, unopened.
Fet remarks: 'So all my attempts to put the matter right ended in a formal rupture of my relations with Tolstoy, and I cannot now even remember how friendly intercourse between us was renewed.'
Before four months had passed, Tolstoy repented him of his quarrel. Like Prince Nehlúdof in Resurrection, he used from time to time to repent of all his sins and all his quarrels, and undertook a sort of spring- or autumn-cleaning of his soul. It was at such a moment that, on 25th September, he wrote to Tourgénef expressing regret that their relations to one another were hostile, and he added: 'If I have insulted you, forgive me; I find it unendurably hard to think I have an enemy.' Not knowing Tourgénef's address in France, he sent this letter to a bookseller in Petersburg (with whom he knew Tourgénef corresponded) to be forwarded. The letter took more than three months to reach its destination, nor was this the only thing that went wrong, as is shown by the following portion of a letter, dated 8th November, from Tourgénef to Fet:
Apropos, 'one more last remark' about the unfortunate affair with Tolstoy. Passing through Petersburg I learned from certain 'reliable people' (Oh, those reliable people!) that copies of Tolstoy's last letter to me (the letter in which he 'despises' me) are circulating in Moscow, and are said to have been distributed by Tolstoy himself. That enraged me, and I sent him a challenge to fight when I return to Russia. Tolstoy has answered that the circulation of the copies is pure invention, and he encloses another letter in which, recapitulating that, and how, I insulted him, he asks my forgiveness and declines my challenge. Of course the matter must end there, and I will only ask you to tell him (for he writes that he will consider any fresh communication from me to him as an insult) that I myself repudiate any duel, etc., and hope the whole matter is buried for ever. His letter (apologising) I have destroyed. Another letter, which he says he sent me through the bookseller Davídof, I never received. And now as to the whole matter—de profundis.
Tolstoy noted in his Diary one day in October:
Yesterday I received a letter from Tourgénef in which he accuses me of saying he is a coward and of circulating copies of my letter. I have written him that it is nonsense, and I have also sent him a letter: 'You call my action dishonourable and you formerly wished to punch my head; but I consider myself guilty, ask pardon, and refuse the challenge.'