I am arranging to go to Samára in September. If Peter Afanásyevitch has no plans for September, will not he go with me to see the Kirghiz and their horses? How jolly it would be!
Mention has already been made of the fact that Tolstoy, who understood horses very well, was at this time interested in horse-breeding as a source of revenue. To buy them he visited Orenbourg, where he met General Kryzhanóvsky, a friend who had been one of his superior officers in Sevastopol and was now Governor-General of this northern Province. They spent the time together very pleasantly recalling their past experiences.
To his wife, who had found it hard to consent to his absence, he wrote in September:
I know that it is hard for you, and that you are afraid; but I saw the effort you made to control yourself and not to hinder me and, were it possible, I loved you yet more on that account. If only God grants you to spend the time well, healthily, energetically and usefully!... Lord have mercy on me and on thee!
In a letter of 13th November Tolstoy writes to Fet:
Pity me for two things: (1) a good-for-nothing coachman took the stallions to Samára and, wishing to take a short cut, drowned Gouneba in a bog within ten miles of the estate; (2) I sleep and cannot write; I despise myself for laziness and do not allow myself to take up any other work.
Twenty-eight years after the loss of Gouneba, the Countess, in speaking to me of her husband's qualities as a man of affairs, remarked that his schemes were very good, but that he generally spoilt them by lack of care in details. 'For instance,' she remarked, 'it was quite a good idea of his to send a very fine stallion which cost Rs. 2000 [about £260] to our estate in Samára. There were no such horses in the district; but he must needs entrust it to a drunken Tartar who made away with it and said he had lost it.'
On 7th December 1876 Tolstoy wrote to Fet acknowledging a poem, 'Among the Stars,' which the latter had sent him:
That poem is not only worthy of you, but is specially, specially good, with that philosophic-poetic character which I expect from you. It is excellent that it is said by the stars.... It is also good, as my wife remarked, that on the same sheet on which the poem is written, you pour out your grief that the price of kerosene has risen to 12 copecks. That is an indirect but sure sign of a poet.