I think you have had news of the death of Nicholas. I am sorry for you that you were not here. Hard as it is, I am glad it all took place in my presence, and that it acted on me in the right way—not like Mítenka's [his third brother, Demetrius] death, of which I heard when I was not thinking at all about him. However, this is quite different. With Mítenka only memories of childhood and family feeling were bound up; but this was a real man both to you and to me, whom we loved and respected positively more than any one else on earth. You know the selfish feeling which came latterly, that the sooner it was over the better; it is dreadful now to write it and to remember that one thought it. Till the last day, with his extraordinary strength of character and power of concentration, he did everything to avoid becoming a burden to me. On the day of his death he dressed and washed himself, and in the morning I found him dressed on his bed. Only about nine hours before he died did he give way to his illness and ask to be undressed. It first happened in the closet. I went downstairs, and heard his door open. I returned and did not find him. At first I feared to go to him—he used not to like it; but this time he himself said, 'Help me!'
And he submitted and became different that day, mild and gentle. He did not groan, did not blame any one, praised everybody, and said to me: 'Thank you, my friend.' You understand what that meant between us. I told him I had heard how he coughed in the morning, but did not come to him from fausse honte [false shame]. 'Needlessly,' said he—'it would have consoled me.' Suffering? He suffered; but it was not until a couple of days before his death that he once said: 'How terrible these nights without sleep are! Towards morning the cough chokes one, unendingly! And it hurts—God knows how! A couple more such nights—it's terrible!' Not once did he say plainly that he felt the approach of death. But he only did not say it. On the day of his death he ordered a dressing-gown, and yet when I remarked that if he did not get better, Máshenka and I would not go to Switzerland, he replied: 'Do you really think I shall be better?' in such a tone that it was evident what he felt but for my sake did not say, and what I for his sake did not show; all the same, from the morning I knew what was coming, and was with him all the time. He died quite without suffering—externally, at all events. He breathed more and more slowly—and it was all over. The next day I went to him and feared to uncover his face. I thought it would show yet more suffering and be more terrible than during his illness; but you cannot imagine what a beautiful face it was, with his best, merry, calm expression.
Yesterday he was buried here. At one time I thought of transporting him, and of telegraphing for you; but I reconsidered it. It is no use chafing the wound. I am sorry for you that the news will have reached you out hunting, amid distractions, and will not grip you as it does us. It is good for one. I now feel what I have often been told, that when one loses some one who was what he was to us, it becomes much easier to think of one's own death.
On 13th October 1860 he notes in his Diary:
It is nearly a month since Nicholas died. That event has torn me terribly from life. Again the question: Why? Already the departure draws near. Whither? Nowhere. I try to write, I force myself, but do not get on, because I cannot attach enough importance to the work to supply the necessary strength and patience. At the very time of the funeral the thought occurred to me to write a Materialist Gospel, a Life of Christ as a Materialist.
One sees how bit by bit the seeds of the work Tolstoy was to do in later years planted themselves in his mind. In early childhood came the enthusiasm for the Ant-Brotherhood and the influence of his brother, of Aunt Tatiána, and of the pilgrims; then an acquaintance with the writings of Voltaire and other sceptics, undermining belief in the miraculous; then, in Sevastopol, the idea of 'founding a new religion: Christianity purged of dogmas and mysticism'; then a study of Luther's Reformation, and now the idea of a rationalist Life of Christ.
Tolstoy in 1860, the year his brother Nicholas died.
On 17th October Tolstoy writes to Fet:
I think you already know what has happened. On 20 September he died, literally in my arms. Nothing in my life has so impressed me. It is true, as he said, that nothing is worse than death. And when one reflects well that yet that is the end of all, then there is nothing worse than life. Why strive or try, since of what was Nicholas Tolstoy nothing remains his? He did not say that he felt the approach of death, but I know he watched each step of its approach and knew with certainty how much remained. Some moments before his death he drowsed off, but awoke suddenly and whispered with horror: 'What is that?' That was when he saw it—the absorption of himself into Nothingness. And if he found nothing to cling to, what can I find? Still less! And assuredly neither I nor any one will fight it to the last moment, as he did. Two days before, I said to him: 'We ought to put a commode in your room.'