At this time the state of health of his brother Nicholas—who (like Demetrius) had consumptive tendencies—began to disturb Leo Tolstoy. It was arranged that Nicholas should go to Germany for a cure. The following letter written by Leo Tolstoy to Fet, after Nicholas had started, refers to this and other matters:
... You are a writer and remain a writer, and God speed you. But that, besides this, you wish to find a spot where you can dig like an ant, is an idea which has come to you and which you must carry out, and carry out better than I have done. You must do it because you are both a good man and one who looks at life healthily.... However, it is not for me now to deal out to you approval or disapproval with an air of authority. I am greatly at sixes and sevens with myself. Farming on the scale on which it is carried out on my estate, crushes me. To 'Ufanize'[41] is a thing I only see afar off. Family affairs, Nicholas's illness (of which we have as yet no news from abroad) and my sister's departure (she leaves me in three days' time) also crush and occupy me. Bachelor life, i.e. not having a wife, and the thought that it is getting too late, torments me from a third side. In general, everything is now out of tune with me. On account of my sister's helplessness and my wish to see Nicholas, I shall at any rate procure a foreign passport to-morrow, and perhaps I shall accompany my sister abroad; especially if we do not receive news, or receive bad news, from Nicholas. How much I would give to see you before leaving, how much I want to tell you and to hear from you; but it is now hardly possible. Yet if this letter reaches you quickly, remember that we leave Yásnaya on Thursday or more probably on Friday.
Now as to farming: The price they ask of you is not exorbitant, and if the place pleases you, you should buy it. Only why do you want so much land? I have learned by three years' experience that with all imaginable diligence it is impossible to grow cereals profitably or pleasantly on more than 60 or 70 desyatíns [160 to 190 acres] that is, on about 15 desyatíns in each of four fields. Only in that way can one escape trembling for every omission (for then one ploughs not twice but three or four times) and for every hour a peasant misses, and for every extra rouble-a-month one pays him; for one can bring 15 desyatíns to the point of yielding 30 to 40 per cent. on the fixed and working capital; but with 80 or 100 desyatíns under plough one cannot do so. Please do not let this advice slip past your ears; it is not idle talk, but a result of experience I have had to pay for. Any one who tells you differently is either lying or ignorant. More than that, even with 15 desyatíns an all-absorbing industry is necessary. But then one can gain a reward—one of the pleasantest life gives; whereas with 90 desyatíns one has to labour like a post-horse, with no possibility of success. I cannot find sufficient words to scold myself for not having written to you sooner—in which case you would surely have come to see us. Now farewell.
Things meanwhile were not going very well with Nicholas, who wrote from Soden in Hesse-Nassau:
In Soden we joined Tourgénef, who is alive and well—so well that he himself confesses that he is 'quite' well. He has found some German girl and goes into ecstasies about her. We (this relates to our dearest Tourgénef) play chess together, but somehow it does not go as it should: he is thinking of his German girl, and I of my cure.... I shall probably stay in Soden for at least six weeks. I do not describe my journey because I was ill all the time.
Eventually Leo Tolstoy made up his mind to accompany his sister and her children abroad, and on 3rd July (old style) they took steamer from Petersburg for Stettin en route for Berlin. Besides anxiety on his brother's account, Tolstoy had another reason for going abroad: he wished to study the European systems of education, in order to know what had been accomplished in the line to which he now intended to devote himself.
On reaching Berlin he suffered from toothache for four days, and decided to remain there while his sister proceeded to join Nicholas at Soden. He consulted a doctor, as he was suffering also from headache and hemorrhoidal attacks, and he was ordered to take a cure at Kissingen.
He only stayed a few days in Berlin after getting rid of his toothache, and left on 14th July (old style), having however found time to attend lectures on History by Droysen, and on Physics and Physiology by Du Bois-Reymond, and having also visited some evening classes for artisans at the Handwerksverein, where he was greatly interested in the popular lectures, and particularly in the system of 'question-boxes.' The method of arousing the interest of the audience by allowing them to propound questions for the lecturer to reply to, was new to him, and he was struck by the life it brought into the classes, and by the freedom of mental contact between scholars and teacher. He noticed the same thing when he was in London a few months later, for he told me that nothing he saw there interested him more than a lecture he attended in South Kensington, at which questions were put by working men, and answered by a speaker who was master of his subject and knew how to popularise it.
In Berlin he visited the Moabit Prison, in which solitary confinement was practised. Tolstoy strongly disapproved of this mechanical attempt to achieve moral reformation. From Berlin he went to Leipzig, where he spent a day inspecting schools; but he derived little satisfaction from the Saxon schools he visited, as is indicated by a remark he jotted down in his Diary, 'Have been in school—terrible. Prayers for the King, blows, everything by rote, frightened, paralysed children....' He then proceeded to Dresden, where he called on the novelist Auerbach, whose story, Ein Neues Leben (A New Life), had much influenced him. The chief character in that story is Count Fulkenberg, who after being an officer in the army, gets into trouble, escapes from prison, buys the passport of a school-master, Eugene Baumann, and under that name devotes himself to the task of educating peasant children. When Auerbach entered the room in which his visitor was waiting, the latter introduced himself with the words: 'I am Eugene Baumann,' in such solemn tones and with so morose an appearance, that the German writer was taken aback and feared that he was about to be threatened with an action for libel. Tolstoy however hastened to add: '—not in name, but in character—' and went on to explain how good an effect Auerbach's Schwarzwälder Dorfgeschichten (Village Tales of the Black Forest) had had on him.
After three days in Dresden, he went on to Kissingen, which was in those days about five hours' journey from Soden, where Nicholas was staying. Still intent on his educational inquiries, he read en route a history of pedagogics.