CHAPTER VII
AT YÁSNAYA AGAIN; TOURGÉNEF; ARBITER; MAGAZINE
Quarrel with Tourgénef. Attitude towards Reforms. Arbiter of the Peace. Educational Magazine.
After the winter's snow has so far thawed that sleighing is impracticable, there comes a time during which there is still too much snow left, and the roads have become too soft to allow of travelling on wheels, and when transit is practically impossible. Tolstoy reached Moscow at this transition period, but had not to wait long before the roads were dry enough for carriage traffic. He made the journey southward to Toúla in company with Mrs. Fet, wife of his friend the poet. Mrs. Fet was travelling in her own carriage, accompanied by her maid, to the estate Fet had purchased at some distance from Yásnaya. Tolstoy had his own conveyance, but for company's sake changed places with the maid and travelled with Mrs. Fet. In the cool of the evening he borrowed and wrapped himself in a cloak of Fet's, declaring that this would be sure to result in his producing a lyric poem.
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.'