1873
A few months later he definitely abandoned the project. His opinion of Peter the Great ran directly counter to the popular one, and he felt out of sympathy with the whole epoch. He declared there was nothing great about the personality or activity of Peter, whose qualities were all bad. His so-called reforms, far from aiming at the welfare of the people, aimed simply at his own personal advantage. He founded Petersburg because the boyars, who were influential and consequently dangerous to him, disapproved of the changes he made, and because he wished to be free to follow an immoral mode of life. The changes and reforms he introduced were borrowed from Saxony, where the laws were most cruel, and the morals most dissolute—all of which particularly pleased him. This, Tolstoy holds, explains Peter's friendship with the Elector of Saxony, who was among the most immoral of rulers. He also considers that Peter's intimacy with the pieman Ménshikof and with the Swiss deserter Lefort, is explained by the contempt in which Peter was held by all the boyars, among whom he could not find men willing to share his dissolute life. Most of all, Tolstoy was revolted by the murder of Peter's son Alexis, in which crime Tolstoy's own ancestor had played a very prominent part.
Almost simultaneously with the abandonment of the project to which he had devoted so much time and attention, Tolstoy, without any special preparation, began to write his second great novel, Anna Karénina.
The year before, a lady named Anna who lived with Bíbikof, a neighbouring squire mentioned on a previous page, had committed suicide by throwing herself under a train, out of jealousy of Bíbikof's attentions to their governess. Tolstoy knew all the details of the affair, and had been present at the post-mortem. This supplied him with a theme; but it was not till March 1873, and then as it were by accident, that he actually began to write the book. One day a volume of Poúshkin happened to be lying open at the commencement of A Fragment, which begins with the words, 'The guests had arrived at the country house.' Tolstoy, noticing this, remarked to those present that these words, plunging at once into the midst of things, are a model of how a story should begin. Some one then laughingly suggested that he should begin a novel in that way; and Tolstoy at once started on Anna Karénina, the second sentence, and first narrative sentence, of which is, 'All was in confusion in the Oblónskys' house.'
In May Tolstoy and his whole family went for a three months' visit to Samára, where he had recently purchased some more land.
This summer he hired a Bashkír named Mouhamed Shah, who owned and brought with him a herd of milking mares. This Mouhamed Shah, or Románovitch as he was called in Russian, was polite, punctual, and dignified. He had a workman to drive the herd, and a wife (who retired behind a curtain in his kotchévka when visitors came to see him) to wait upon him. In subsequent years this worthy man repeatedly resumed his engagement with the Tolstoys.
This was the first year the whole estate had been ploughed up and sown. It was fortunate for the district that some one who had the ear of the public, happened to be there; for the crops in the whole neighbourhood failed utterly, and a famine ensued. So out-of-the-world were the people and so cut off from civilisation, that they might have suffered and died without the rest of Russia hearing anything about it, had not Tolstoy been at hand to make their plight known in good time by an appeal for help, which the Countess prompted him to draw up, and which appeared on 17th August, in Katkóf's paper, the Moscow Gazette.
In this article on the Samára Famine, Tolstoy describes how the complete failure of the harvest, following as it did on two previous poor harvests, had brought nearly nine-tenths of the population to destitution and hunger.
To ascertain the real state of things Tolstoy took an inventory at every tenth house in the village of Gavrílovka—the one nearest his estate; and of the twenty-three families so examined, all but one were found to be in debt, and none of them knew how they were to get through the winter. Most of the men had left home to look for work, but the harvest being bad everywhere, and so many people being in search of work, the price of labour had fallen to one-eighth of what it had previously been.
Tolstoy visited several villages and found a similar state of things everywhere. Together with his article, he sent Rs. 100 (then equal to about £14) as a first subscription to a Famine Fund. This was only a small part of what he spent in relief of the impoverished peasants, for when Prougávin (well known for his valuable descriptions of Russian sects) visited the district in 1881, many of the inhabitants spoke to him of Tolstoy's personal kindness to the afflicted, and of his gifts of corn and money during the famine.
The subscription proved a success. Tolstoy's aunt, the Countess A. A. Tolstoy (who had charge of the education of Marie Alexándrovna, subsequently Duchess of Edinburgh), mentioned the matter to the Empress, who was one of the first to contribute. Her example was largely followed, and altogether, in money and in kind, something like Rs. 2,000,000, or about £270,000, was contributed during 1873-4. Within a year or two, good harvests again completely changed the whole appearance of the district.
This was the first, but neither the last nor the worst, of the famines in which Tolstoy rendered help.
Before the end of August 1873 he was back at Yásnaya, and wrote to Fet:
On the 22nd we arrived safely from Samára.... In spite of the drought, the losses and the inconvenience, we all, even my wife, are satisfied with our visit, and yet more satisfied to be back in the old frame of our life; and we are now taking up our respective labours....
A month later he writes again, referring to Kramskóy's portrait of himself, a photogravure of which forms the frontispiece of this volume, and shows the blouse which even in those days, before his Conversion, he wore when at home, instead of a tailor-made coat:
25 September 1873.
I am beginning to write.... The children are learning; my wife is busy and teaches. Every day for a week Kramskóy has been painting my portrait for Tretyakóf's Gallery, and I sit and chat with him, and try to convert him from the Petersburg faith to the faith of the baptized. I agreed to this, because Kramskóy came personally, and offered to paint a second portrait for us very cheaply, and because my wife persuaded me.
Up to this time Tolstoy, sensitive about his personal appearance, and instinctively disliking any personal advertisement, had always had an objection to having his portrait painted; and if he ever allowed himself to be photographed, was careful to have the negative destroyed that copies might not be multiplied. This prejudice he abandoned in later life; and after Kramskóy had broken the ice, portraits and photographs of Tolstoy became more and more common.
Kramskóy's acquaintance with the Tolstoys came about in this way. He was commissioned to paint a portrait of the great novelist, for the collection of famous Russians in Tretyakóf's picture gallery in Moscow; but sought in vain in that town for his photograph, and was too modest to ask Tolstoy (who, he knew, was living a secluded life at Yásnaya) to give him sittings. He therefore hired a dátcha, some three miles from Yásnaya, with the intention of painting Tolstoy, who often rode past on horseback. His intention, however, became known, and the Tolstoys at once sent him a friendly invitation to visit them. Of the two very similar portraits of Tolstoy which Kramskóy painted, one has remained at Yásnaya.
Before Tolstoy's next letter to Fet, the angel of death had crossed the threshold of his house for the first time in his married life. On 11th November he wrote:
We are in trouble: Peter, our youngest, fell ill with croup and died in two days. It is the first death in our family in eleven years, and my wife feels it very deeply. One may console oneself by saying that if one had to choose one of our eight, this loss is lighter than any other would have been; but the heart, especially the mother's heart—that wonderful and highest manifestation of Divinity on earth—does not reason, and my wife grieves.