In this whole story, one may detect traces of the qualities which have made Tolstoy so interesting and so perplexing a personality. He cares intensely about everything with which he is occupied. Tourgénef, and Tourgénef's opinions and conduct, were of tremendous importance to him. So were his own views of how young ladies should be brought up. So was the question whether he ought to challenge his enemy; and, later on, the question whether he ought to forgive him, and whether Fet should be allowed to act as mediator. It is this fact—that he cares about things a hundred times more than other people care about them—that makes Tolstoy a genius and a great writer. What was admirable in his conduct was not that he acted well (as a matter of fact he acted very badly) but that he wished to act well.
The same spirit which made him so intolerant with Tourgénef: his strong feeling that 'To whom much is given, of him much shall be required'—had something to do, later in life, with his fierce attacks on Governments, on Shakespear, on Wagner, and on other great institutions and men. At the same time, the incident throws light on that side of Tolstoy's character which has brought it about that, despite the very real charm he possesses, and despite the fact that many men and women have been immensely attracted by his writings, he has had very few intimate friends, and has constantly been misunderstood.
V. P. Bótkin, who was in touch both with Tolstoy and Tourgénef, wrote to Fet after hearing of the quarrel:
The scene between him [Tourgénef] and Tolstoy at your house, produced on me a sad impression. But do you know, I believe that in reality Tolstoy has a passionately loving soul; only he wants to love Tourgénef ardently, and unfortunately his impulsive feeling encounters merely mild, good-natured indifference. That is what he cannot reconcile himself to. And then (again unfortunately) his mind is in a chaos, i.e. I wish to say it has not yet reached any definite outlook on life and the world's affairs. That is why his conviction changes so often, and why he is so apt to run to extremes. His soul burns with unquenchable thirst; I say 'unquenchable,' because what satisfied it yesterday, is to-day broken up by his analysis. But that analysis has no durable and firm reagents, and consequently its results evaporate ins blaue hinein. Without some firm ground under one's feet it is impossible to write. And that is why at present he cannot write, and this will continue to be the case till his soul finds something on which it can rest.
To any one acquainted with the history of Russia at that period, but not acquainted with Tolstoy's idiosyncrasies, it must indeed seem strange that the story of his life can be told with so little reference to the Emancipation or the Reform movements of the years 1860-1864, to which allusion has already been made. Two passages written by him in 1904 state his relation to those movements with the sincerity which is so prominent and valuable a feature of his character:
As to my attitude at that time to the excited condition of our whole society, I must say (and this is a good and bad trait always characteristic of me) that I always involuntarily opposed any external, epidemic pressure; and that if I was excited and happy at that time, this proceeded from my own personal, inner motives: those which drew me to my school work and into touch with the peasants.
I recognise in myself now the same feeling of resistance to the excitement at present prevailing; which resembles that which, in a more timid form, was then current.
When the Emancipation came, the peasants received freedom, and an allotment of land, subject to a special land-tax for sixty years; while their masters retained the rest of the land and received State Bonds for the capitalised value of the peasants' land-tax. An expedient resorted to by many a proprietor was, to allot land to the peasants in such a way that the latter were left without any pasture, and (being surrounded by the owner's estate) found themselves obliged to hire pasture land of him on his own terms. There were, till the Emancipation, two ways of holding serfs: (1) the primitive way of obliging them to work so many days a week for their master, before they could, on the other days, provide for their own wants; and (2) another way, which left the serf free to work for himself, provided that he paid obrók, i.e. a certain yearly tribute to his owner. These explanations will render intelligible the second passage referred to above and quoted below:
Some three or four years before the Emancipation, I let my serfs go on obrók. When complying with the Emancipation Decree I arranged, as the law required, to leave the peasants in possession of the land they were cultivating on their own behalf, which amounted to rather less than eight acres per head, and (to my shame be it said) I added nothing thereto. The only thing I did—or the one evil I refrained from doing—was that I abstained from obliging the peasants to exchange land (as I was advised to do) and left them in possession of the pasture they needed. In general, however, I did not show any disinterested feeling in the affair.
In the first edition of Tolstoy and his Problems I erroneously stated that Tolstoy, before the Decree of Emancipation, voluntarily freed his serfs; and though this was corrected in the second edition, it is necessary to repeat the correction here, as the same mistake occurs in the article on Tolstoy in the Encyclopædia Britannica. I therefore quote the following passage from a letter he wrote me on the subject: