I must say that Count Tolstoy's educational activity deserves full respect, and the Ministry of Education is bound to assist and co-operate with him, though it cannot share all his views, some of which after full consideration he will himself probably reject.
Other things besides the suspicion in which he was held by the Minister of the Interior, tended to discourage Tolstoy. His magazine had few subscribers and attracted but little attention. The year's issue was causing him a loss of something like Rs. 3000 (say about £450)—a larger sum than he could well afford to throw away. So he decided to discontinue it after the twelfth number. The month after his marriage he also closed the school, which was too great a tax on his time and attention.
It has often been said that the obstacles placed in his way by the Government turned him aside from educational work, but in speaking to me about it Tolstoy remarked that really the main factor was his marriage, and his preoccupation with family life.
Both he and his wife were absorbed by their personal happiness, though from time to time small quarrels and misunderstandings arose between them. So impulsive and strenuous a nature as Tolstoy's was sure to have its fluctuations of feeling, but on the whole the ties binding the couple together grew stronger and closer as the months passed into years.
The Countess's parents used to say: 'We could not have wished for greater happiness for our daughter.' The Countess not only loved Tolstoy dearly as a husband, but had the deepest admiration for him as a writer. He on his side often said that he found in family life the completest happiness, and in Sophia Andréyevna not only a loving wife and an excellent mother for his children, but an admirable assistant in his literary work, in which, owing to his careless and unmethodical habits, an intelligent and devoted amanuensis was invaluable. The Countess acquired remarkable skill in deciphering his often extremely illegible handwriting, and was sometimes able to guess in a quite extraordinary way the meaning of his hasty jottings and incomplete sentences.
One drawback to their almost complete happiness lay in the fact that though active and possessed of great physical strength, Tolstoy seldom enjoyed any long periods of uninterrupted good health. In his correspondence we find frequent references to indisposition. In early manhood, he seems to have distended his stomach, and, especially after the hardships he endured during the war of 1854-5, he was subject to digestive troubles for the rest of his days.
Town life did not attract him. He had never felt at ease in what is called high society; nor were his means large enough to enable him to support a wife and family in a good position in town. Still, towards the close of the year of his marriage, he and the Countess spent some weeks in Moscow.
1863
They were however soon back at Yásnaya. In February Fet visited them there, and found them overflowing with life and happiness.
On 15th May, after the Tolstoys and Fet had by some chance just missed meeting at the house of a neighbouring proprietor, Tolstoy wrote to his friend: